Sample records for affect job performance

Capturing data from employee-supervisor dyads (N = 321) from eight organizations in Pakistan, including human service organizations, an electronics assembly plant, a packaging material manufacturing company, and a small food processing plant, we used moderated regression analysis to examine whether the relationships between trait affect (positive affectivity [PA] and negative affectivity [NA]) and two key work outcome variables (jobperformance and turnover) are contingent upon the level of job satisfaction. We applied the Trait Activation Theory to explain the moderating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between affect and performance and between affect and turnover. Overall, the data supported our hypotheses. Positive and negative affectivity influenced performance and the intention to quit, and job satisfaction moderated these relationships. We discuss in detail the results of these findings and their implications for research and practice. PMID:23469474

A study of 270 hotel managers found that the strongest positive relationship between job satisfaction and performance occurred when high attainment of values associated with work was coupled with high-positive or low-negative affective disposition. (SK)

Affect, curiosity, and socialization-relation were explored as potential mediators of the relationship between both state and trait affect and jobperformance. The cross-sectional sample consisted of 81 women and 152 men between the ages of 17 and 50 or older. The typical participant was a male Caucasian under the age of 40 with some college…

Extensive research has explored job satisfaction, jobperformance, and the financial performance of organizations. Job satisfaction and jobperformance have been explored separately and collectively. However, scholars only have begun to explore the relationship between employee job satisfaction and financial performance of organization. This paper…

Considerable evidence suggests that how candidates react to selection procedures can affect their test performance and their attitudes toward the hiring organization (e.g., recommending the firm to others). However, very few studies of candidate reactions have examined one of the outcomes organizations care most about: jobperformance. We attempt to address this gap by developing and testing a conceptual framework that delineates whether and how candidate reactions might influence jobperformance. We accomplish this objective using data from 4 studies (total N = 6,480), 6 selection procedures (personality tests, job knowledge tests, cognitive ability tests, work samples, situational judgment tests, and a selection inventory), 5 key candidate reactions (anxiety, motivation, belief in tests, self-efficacy, and procedural justice), 2 contexts (industry and education), 3 continents (North America, South America, and Europe), 2 study designs (predictive and concurrent), and 4 occupational areas (medical, sales, customer service, and technological). Consistent with previous research, candidate reactions were related to test scores, and test scores were related to jobperformance. Further, there was some evidence that reactions affectedperformance indirectly through their influence on test scores. Finally, in no cases did candidate reactions affect the prediction of jobperformance by increasing or decreasing the criterion-related validity of test scores. Implications of these findings and avenues for future research are discussed. PMID:23937298

Based on affective events theory (AET), we hypothesize a four-step model of the mediating mechanisms of positive mood and job satisfaction in the relationship between work-family enrichment and jobperformance. We test this model for both directions of enrichment (work-to-family and family-to-work). We used two samples to test the model using structural equation modeling. Results from Study 1, which included 240 full-time employees, were replicated in Study 2, which included 189 matched subordinate-supervisor dyads. For the work-to-family direction, results from both samples support our conceptual model and indicate mediation of the enrichment-performance relationship for the work-to-family direction of enrichment. For the family-to-work direction, results from the first sample support our conceptual model but results from the second sample do not. Our findings help elucidate mixed findings in the enrichment and jobperformance literatures and contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms linking these concepts. We conclude with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of our findings. PMID:21728437

Although interest regarding the role of dispositional affect in job behaviors has surged in recent years, the true magnitude of affectivity's influence remains unknown. To address this issue, the authors conducted a qualitative and quantitative review of the relationships between positive and negative affectivity (PA and NA, respectively) and various performance dimensions. A series of meta-analyses based on 57 primary studies indicated that PA and NA predicted task performance in the hypothesized directions and that the relationships were strongest for subjectively rated versus objectively rated performance. In addition, PA was related to organizational citizenship behaviors but not withdrawal behaviors, and NA was related to organizational citizenship behaviors, withdrawal behaviors, counterproductive work behaviors, and occupational injury. Mediational analyses revealed that affect operated through different mechanisms in influencing the various performance dimensions. Regression analyses documented that PA and NA uniquely predicted task performance but that extraversion and neuroticism did not, when the four were considered simultaneously. Discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved). PMID:19186902

Explores the relationships between employee satisfaction with various types of organizational communication, employee job satisfaction, and jobperformance as evaluated by supervisors, in a field study of 327 hospital nurses. Correlates results with results of other studies. (MS)

The present study examines the role of trait affect in job search. One hundred and twenty-three university students completed measures of positive and negative affectivity, conscientiousness, job search self-efficacy, job search clarity, and job search intensity during their last year of school while on the job market. At the end of the school…

In this paper, we contrast the effects of leader-member exchange (LMX) with the effects of perceived job mobility on in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We further model negative affectivity as the antecedent of both LMX and perceived job mobility and suggest that LMX and perceived job mobility mediated the relationship between negative affectivity and performance. We obtained matching data from supervisor and subordinates in a major battery manufacturing company in southern China. Subordinates provided the negative affectivity, perceived job mobility, and LMX assessment, and their immediate supervisors provided the in-role performance and OCB assessment. Results from a structural equation analysis show that both LMX and perceived job mobility predicted OCB. Instead of being a direct antecedent of OCB, the relationship between negative affectivity and OCB is found to be mediated by LMX and perceived job mobility. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed. Copyright 1999 Academic Press. PMID:9924139

Job analysis, job descriptions, and performance appraisal can benefit student services administration in many ways. Involving staff members in the development and implementation of these techniques can increase commitment to and understanding of the overall objectives of the office, as well as communication and cooperation among colleagues.…

Tales of great strategies derailed by poor execution are all too common. That's because some organizations are designed to fail. For a company to achieve its potential, each employee's supply of organizational resources should equal the demand, and the same balance must apply to every business unit and to the company as a whole. To carry out his or her job, each employee has to know the answers to four basic questions: What resources do I control to accomplish my tasks? What measures will be used to evaluate my performance? Who do I need to interact with and influence to achieve my goals? And how much support can I expect when I reach out to others for help? The questions correspond to what the author calls the four basic spans of a job-control, accountability, influence, and support. Each span can be adjusted so that it is narrow or wide or somewhere in between. If you get the settings right, you can design a job in which a talented individual can successfully execute on your company's strategy. If you get the settings wrong, it will be difficult for an employee to be effective. The first step is to set the span of control to reflect the resources allocated to each position and unit that plays an important role in delivering customer value. This setting, like the others, is determined by how the business creates value for customers and differentiates its products and services. Next, you can dial in different levels of entrepreneurial behavior and creative tension by widening or narrowing spans of accountability and influence. Finally, you must adjust the span of support to ensure that the job or unit will get the informal help it needs. PMID:16028816

Job engagement has received widespread attention in organizational research but has rarely been empirically investigated in the context of safety. In the present study, we examined the mediating role of job engagement in the relationships between job characteristics and safety performance using self-reported data collected at a coal mining company in China. Most of our study hypotheses were supported. Job engagement partially mediated the relationships between job resources and safety performance dimensions. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are also discussed. PMID:26154214

As the fit between job values and job rewards becomes more important to American workers, it is important to understand factors which may affect these values. Data from the combined General Social Surveys of 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1980 were used to investigate the influence of education, job prestige, earnings, age, sex, race, and family…

This study examined the relationship between job stress and employees' performance and withdrawal behavior among nurses (N = 440) in two hospitals in a metropolitan Canadian city on the east coast. Job stressors assessed included role ambiguity, role overload, role conflict, and resource inadequacy. Employees' performance was operationalized in terms of jobperformance, motivation, and patient care skill. Withdrawal behaviors assessed were absenteeism, tardiness, and anticipated turnover. Multiple regressions, curvilinear correlation coefficients, and canonical correlations were computed to test the nature of the relationship between stressors and the criterion variables of the study. In general, data were more supportive of the negative linear relationship between stress and performance than for positive linear or curvilinear relationship. However, the stressor role ambiguity did exhibit a monotonic nonlinear relationship with a number of criterion variables. Employees' professional and organizational commitment were proposed to moderate the stress-performance relationship. However, the data only partially supported the role of the moderators. PMID:10265480

We report on the use of a supercomputer simulation to study the performance sensitivity to systematic changes in the job parameters of run time, number of CPUs, and interarrival time. We also examine the effect of changes in share allocation and service ratio for job prioritization under a Fair Share queuing Algorithm to see the effect on facility figures of merit. We used log data from the ASCI supercomputer Blue Mountain and the ASCI simulator BIRMinator to perform this study. The key finding is that the performance of the supercomputer is quite sensitive to all the job parameters with the interarrival rate of the jobs being most sensitive at the highest rates and increasing run times the least sensitive job parameter with respect to utilization and rapid turnaround. We also find that this facility is running near its maximum practical utilization. Finally, we show the importance of the use of simulation in understanding the performance sensitivity of a supercomputer.

This study investigated the cross-sectional association of job demands (i.e., psychological demands) and job resources (i.e., decision latitude, supervisor support, co-worker support, and extrinsic reward) with jobperformance. A total of 1,198 workers (458 males and 740 females) from a manufacturing company in Japan completed a self-administered questionnaire that included the Job Content Questionnaire, Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire, World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire, and demographic survey. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. After adjusting for demographic characteristics, decision latitude (β=0.107, p=0.001) and extrinsic reward (β=0.158, p<0.001) were positively and significantly associated with jobperformance while supervisor support (β=−0.102, p=0.002) was negatively and significantly associated with jobperformance. On the other hand, psychological demands or co-worker support was not significantly associated with jobperformance. These findings suggest that higher decision latitude and extrinsic reward enhance jobperformance among Japanese employees. PMID:25016948

Concerns about insufficient work setting familiarity and orientation of temporary nurses affectingjobperformance are documented in the literature. This mixed-methods study identified unique needs and characteristics of travel nurses, using Web conference focus groups and an Internet survey to reach this geographically dispersed workforce. New knowledge emerged to facilitate more effective travel nurse orientation strategies. PMID:24813177

Acceptance, the willingness to experience thoughts, feelings, and physiological sensations without having to control them or let them determine one's actions, is a major individual determinant of mental health and behavioral effectiveness in a more recent theory of psychopathology. This 2-wave panel study examined the ability of acceptance also to explain mental health, job satisfaction, and performance in the work domain. The authors hypothesized that acceptance would predict these 3 outcomes 1 year later in a sample of customer service center workers in the United Kingdom (N = 412). Results indicated that acceptance predicted mental health and an objective measure of performance over and above job control, negative affectivity, and locus of control. These beneficial effects of having more job control were enhanced when people had higher levels of acceptance. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical relevance of this individual characteristic to occupational health and performance. PMID:14640816

Organizational justice has been shown to play an important role in employees' affective and performance outcomes particularly in uncertain contexts. In this study, we investigated the interaction effect of job insecurity and organizational justice on employees' performance, and examined the mediating role of work engagement from the perspective of uncertainty management theory. We used 2-wave data (Study 1) from a sample of 140 Chinese employees and 3-wave data (Study 2) from a sample of 125 Chinese employees to test our hypotheses. In Study 1, we found that when employees perceived low levels of organizational justice, job insecurity was significantly negatively related to jobperformance. In contrast, we found that job insecurity was not related to jobperformance when there were high levels of organizational justice. Study 2 again supported the interaction of job insecurity and organizational justice on jobperformance. Furthermore, it was found that work engagement mediated the interaction effect. The results of the mediated moderation analysis revealed that job insecurity was negatively associated with jobperformance through work engagement when organizational justice was low. PMID:25402953

Research indicates that when self-appraisals are obtained on a "compared to others" basis, the leniency error is very strong. Using forced distributions in rating programs contributes to defensive behaviors and lowers jobperformance. More research should be conducted on the effects of appraisal on immediate motivation. (Author)

Workplace stress (WS) has been found to affectjob satisfaction (JS), performance, and turnover intentions (TIs) in developed countries, but there is little evidence from other countries and especially rural areas. In rural Taiwan, especially, there is an insufficient health care workforce, and the situation is getting worse. To demonstrate the relationship, we used a cross-sectional structured questionnaire, and data from 344 licensed professionals in 1 rural regional hospital were analyzed using the structural equation model. The results showed that WS had a positive effect on both TI and jobperformance (JP) but a negative effect on satisfaction. JS did improve performance. For the staff with an external locus of control, stress affected JP and satisfaction significantly. For the staff with lower perceived job characteristics, JS affectedperformance significantly. The strategies to decrease stress relating to work load, role conflict, family factors, and working environment should be focused and implemented urgently to lower the turnover rate of health care workers in rural Taiwan. PMID:24174390

Discusses the nature of job satisfaction, its relationship to performance, and associated organizational factors, such as commitment, in research libraries. Symptoms of job dissatisfaction are outlined, and a framework for improving job satisfaction provides suggestions in the areas of hiring, professional development, job design, empowerment, and…

While it has been shown that psychological contract breach leads to detrimental outcomes, relatively little is known about factors leading to perceptions of breach. We examine if job demands and resources predict breach perceptions. We argue that perceiving high demands elicits negative affect, while perceiving high resources stimulates positive affect. Positive and negative affect, in turn, influence the likelihood that psychological contract breaches are perceived. We conducted two experience sampling studies to test our hypotheses: the first using daily surveys in a sample of volunteers, the second using weekly surveys in samples of volunteers and paid employees. Our results confirm that job demands and resources are associated with negative and positive affect respectively. Mediation analyses revealed that people who experienced high job resources were less likely to report psychological contract breach, because they experienced high levels of positive affect. The mediating role of negative affect was more complex, as it increased the likelihood to perceive psychological contract breach, but only in the short-term. PMID:27171275

... 32 National Defense 6 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Jobperformance standards and sanctions. 1656.11... ALTERNATIVE SERVICE § 1656.11 Jobperformance standards and sanctions. (a) Standards of Performance. An ASW is... employer of his other employees in similar jobs. If there are no other employees, the standards...

... 32 National Defense 6 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Jobperformance standards and sanctions. 1656.11... ALTERNATIVE SERVICE § 1656.11 Jobperformance standards and sanctions. (a) Standards of Performance. An ASW is... employer of his other employees in similar jobs. If there are no other employees, the standards...

... 32 National Defense 6 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Jobperformance standards and sanctions. 1656.11... ALTERNATIVE SERVICE § 1656.11 Jobperformance standards and sanctions. (a) Standards of Performance. An ASW is... employer of his other employees in similar jobs. If there are no other employees, the standards...

... 32 National Defense 6 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Jobperformance standards and sanctions. 1656.11... ALTERNATIVE SERVICE § 1656.11 Jobperformance standards and sanctions. (a) Standards of Performance. An ASW is... employer of his other employees in similar jobs. If there are no other employees, the standards...

... 32 National Defense 6 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Jobperformance standards and sanctions. 1656.11... ALTERNATIVE SERVICE § 1656.11 Jobperformance standards and sanctions. (a) Standards of Performance. An ASW is... employer of his other employees in similar jobs. If there are no other employees, the standards...

The present study examined a longitudinal model of state and trait negative affect as predictors of job-search success. Job-search self-efficacy and job-search intensity were also examined as mediators of the negative affect--job-search success relation. Overall the model offered mixed support for Kasl's (1982) Reverse Causation Hypothesis.…

Working from the Employee Work Passion Appraisal (EWPA) model, this article examines the relationship between employee dispositional cynicism, job-specific affect (i.e. positive and negative) and work intentions including intent to use discretionary effort, intent to perform, intent to endorse, intent to stay and intent to be an organisational citizen. An online survey generated participation from 747 current and potential clients of an international consulting company. To evaluate the fit of the data in accordance with the EWPA framework, structural equation modeling was conducted to test the overall fit of the proposed model and to examine the hypothesised relationships between constructs. Analyses confirmed correlations between dispositional cynicism and job-specific affect, supported notable relationships between positive job-specific affect and all work intentions, provided evidence for job-specific affect's mediation of cynicism and work intentions and uncovered a direct negative relationship between cynicism and intent to use organisational citizenship behaviour. Results suggest that state-specific workplace emotions are important for understanding the degree to which employee dispositional cynicism will ultimately influence most performance-related work intentions. However, independent of affect, employee cynicism may directly result in somewhat lower intentions to help others at work. Study limitations and practical implications for employee selection and training are considered. PMID:25178960

The happy-productive worker hypothesis has most often been examined in organizational research by correlating job satisfaction to performance. Recent research has expanded this to include measures of psychological well-being. However, to date, no field research has provided a comparative test of the relative contribution of job satisfaction and psychological well-being as predictors of employee performance. The authors report 2 field studies that, taken together, provide an opportunity to simultaneously examine the relative contribution of psychological well-being and job satisfaction to jobperformance. In Study 1, psychological well-being, but not job satisfaction, was predictive of jobperformance for 47 human services workers. These findings were replicated in Study 2 for 37 juvenile probation officers. These findings are discussed in terms of research on the happy-productive worker hypothesis. PMID:10658888

The job satisfaction-jobperformance relationship has attracted much attention throughout the history of industrial and organizational psychology. Many researchers and most lay people believe that a causal relationship exists between satisfaction and performance. In the current study, however, analyses using meta-analytic data suggested that the…

When people choose a particular occupation, they presumably make an implicit judgment that they will perform well on a job at some point in the future, typically after extensive education and/or on-the-job experience. Research on learning and skill acquisition has pointed to a power law of practice, where large gains in performance come early in…

IQ has played a prominent part in developmental and adult psychology for decades. In the absence of a clear theoretical model of internal cognitive functions, however, construct validity for IQ tests has always been difficult to establish. Test validity, therefore, has always been indirect, by correlating individual differences in test scores with what are assumed to be other criteria of intelligence. Jobperformance has, for several reasons, been one such criterion. Correlations of around 0.5 have been regularly cited as evidence of test validity, and as justification for the use of the tests in developmental studies, in educational and occupational selection and in research programs on sources of individual differences. Here, those correlations are examined together with the quality of the original data and the many corrections needed to arrive at them. It is concluded that considerable caution needs to be exercised in citing such correlations for test validation purposes. PMID:26405429

In this study we developed and tested a self-regulatory model of trait affect in job search. Specifically, we theorized that trait positive and negative affect would influence both motivation control and procrastination, and these mediating variables would, in turn, influence job search outcomes through job search intensity. Using longitudinal…

This study examined relationships between job attitudes, work environment perceptions, and supervisors' ratings of jobperformance among health care employees occupying both medical care and administrative positions in ambulatory clinic settings. Between-group differences were noted on the perceived relationship with the supervisor, level of job/role conflict, and working conditions. Results are discussed in terms of functional and dysfunctional aspects of control systems and path-goal theory of leadership. PMID:1784677

On-the-job stress can be constructive (eustress) or destructive (distress). A survey of 276 school superintendents in 13 western states identified their 10 most distressful situations, the frequency of job-related illnesses, their habits and personality types, and their methods of coping with stress. (RW)

This longitudinal study tested the degree to which an individual characteristic, psychological flexibility, and a work organization variable, job control, predicted ability to learn new skills at work, jobperformance, and mental health, amongst call center workers in the United Kingdom (N = 448). As hypothesized, results indicated that job…

A study examined the link between on-the-job training (OJT) and jobperformance in a randomly selected sample of 50 skilled maintenance craftpersons employed by the city of Chicago. The sample was identified from the training sheets signed by 160 employees who participated in OJT in a 1-month period. The majority of the employees agreed with…

To prevent the potential threats of career plateauing for mid-career employees, it has been suggested to give them challenging assignments. This approach is inspired by empirical findings demonstrating that challenging job assignments generally have positive effects on jobperformance and career development. However, these studies have…

The paper examines the relationship of two aspects of job satisfaction: satisfaction with the work itself (job content) and satisfaction with the job environment (job context) to retention behavior and measures of on-the-jobperformance of first-term Naval enlisted men. While both job content and job context factors were found to be important…

Studied the effect of goal-setting training on the performance and job satisfaction of sales personnel. One group was trained in participative goal setting; one group was trained in assigned goal setting; and one group received no training. Both trained groups showed temporary improvements in performance and job satisfaction. For availability see…

We investigated the effects of preference and degree of match on jobperformance of four 19 to 20-year-old young adults with developmental disabilities placed in community-based job conditions. We identified high-preference, high-matched and low-preference, low-matched job tasks using a video web-based assessment program. The job matching…

The book represents an effort to assess the performance, structure, and direction of the Job Bank Program of the Public Employment Service, a program meant to improve the functioning of the labor market information system in the United States. The research had three goals: to assess the relative goal achievement of job banks; to determine its…

Background: The purpose of this study was to describe the influence of organizational variables on hospital staff nurses’ jobperformance as reported by staff nurses in two cities in Turkey. Hospital ownership status, employment status were examined for their effect on this influence. Methods: The reported influence of organizational variables on jobperformance was measured by a questionnaire developed for this study. Nurses were asked to evaluate the influence of 28 organizational variables on their jobperformance using a five-point Likert-type scale (1- Never effective, 5- Very effective). The study used comparative and descriptive study design. The staff nurses who were included in this study were 831 hospital staff nurses. Descriptive statistics, frequencies, t-test, ANOVA and factor analysis were used for data analysis. Results: The study showed the relative importance of the 28 organizational variables in influencing nurses’ jobperformance. Nurses in this study reported that workload and technological support are the most influential organizational variables on their jobperformance. Factor analysis yielded a five-factor model that explained 53.99% of total variance. Conclusion: Administratively controllable influence job organizational variables influence jobperformance of nurses in different magnitude. PMID:23641403

Economic analysis has so far said little about how an individual's cognitive skills (CS) are related to the individual's economic preferences in different choice domains, such as risk taking or saving, and how preferences in different domains are related to each other. Using a sample of 1,000 trainee truckers we report three findings. First, there is a strong and significant relationship between an individual's CS and preferences. Individuals with better CS are more patient, in both short- and long-run. Better CS are also associated with a greater willingness to take calculated risks. Second, CS predict social awareness and choices in a sequential Prisoner's Dilemma game. Subjects with better CS more accurately forecast others' behavior and differentiate their behavior as a second mover more strongly depending on the first-mover's choice. Third, CS, and in particular, the ability to plan, strongly predict perseverance on the job in a setting with a substantial financial penalty for early exit. Consistent with CS being a common factor in all of these preferences and behaviors, we find a strong pattern of correlation among them. These results, taken together with the theoretical explanation we offer for the relationships we find, suggest that higher CS systematically affect preferences and choices in ways that favor economic success. PMID:19416865

For students and for society a core aspect of higher education is to prepare for future employment. Employability, however, goes beyond getting a job and this paper focuses on the quality of jobperformance, or job mastery. Employability is understood as a process and a product of learning both in higher education and in work life. The paper…

Previous reviews of the literature on the relationship between age and jobperformance have largely focused on core task performance but have paid much less attention to other job behaviors that also contribute to productivity. The current study provides an expanded meta-analysis on the relationship between age and jobperformance that includes 10 dimensions of jobperformance: core task performance, creativity, performance in training programs, organizational citizenship behaviors, safety performance, general counterproductive work behaviors, workplace aggression, on-the-job substance use, tardiness, and absenteeism. Results show that although age was largely unrelated to core task performance, creativity, and performance in training programs, it demonstrated stronger relationships with the other 7 performance dimensions. Results also highlight that the relationships of age with core task performance and with counterproductive work behaviors are curvilinear in nature and that several sample characteristics and data collection characteristics moderate age-performance relationships. The article concludes with a discussion of key research design issues that may further knowledge about the age-performance relationship in the future. PMID:18361640

Prior meta-analyses investigating the relation between the Big 5 personality dimensions and jobperformance have all contained a threat to construct validity, in that much of the data included within these analyses was not derived from actual Big 5 measures. In addition, these reviews did not address the relations between the Big 5 and contextual performance. Therefore, the present study sought to provide a meta-analytic estimate of the criterion-related validity of explicit Big 5 measures for predicting jobperformance and contextual performance. The results for jobperformance closely paralleled 2 of the previous meta-analyses, whereas analyses with contextual performance showed more complex relations among the Big 5 and performance. A more critical interpretation of the Big 5-performance relationship is presented, and suggestions for future research aimed at enhancing the validity of personality predictors are provided. PMID:11125652

Tier-2 computing sites in the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) host CPU-resources (Compute Element, CE) and storage resources (Storage Element, SE). The vast amount of data that needs to processed from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments requires good and efficient use of the available resources. Having a good CPU efficiency for the end users analysis jobs requires that the performance of the storage system is able to scale with I/O requests from hundreds or even thousands of simultaneous jobs. In this presentation we report on the work on improving the SE performance at the Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) Tier-2 used for the Compact Muon Experiment (CMS) at the LHC. Statistics from CMS grid jobs are collected and stored in the CMS Dashboard for further analysis, which allows for easy performance monitoring by the sites and by the CMS collaboration. As part of the monitoring framework CMS uses the JobRobot which sends every four hours 100 analysis jobs to each site. CMS also uses the HammerCloud tool for site monitoring and stress testing and it has replaced the JobRobot. The performance of the analysis workflow submitted with JobRobot or HammerCloud can be used to track the performance due to site configuration changes, since the analysis workflow is kept the same for all sites and for months in time. The CPU efficiency of the JobRobot jobs at HIP was increased approximately by 50 % to more than 90 %, by tuning the SE and by improvements in the CMSSW and dCache software. The performance of the CMS analysis jobs improved significantly too. Similar work has been done on other CMS Tier-sites, since on average the CPU efficiency for CMSSW jobs has increased during 2011. Better monitoring of the SE allows faster detection of problems, so that the performance level can be kept high. The next storage upgrade at HIP consists of SAS disk enclosures which can be stress tested on demand with HammerCloud workflows, to make sure that the I/O-performance

This study investigates the effects of core self-evaluations, job autonomy, and intrinsic motivation on employees' perceptions of their in-role jobperformance, based on a cross-sectional survey of 283 employees in a Fortune Global 100 company in Korea. The results suggest that employees perceived higher in-role jobperformance when they had…

The report provides simplified instructions for writing and illustrating JobPerformance Aids (JPAs). JPAs are step-by-step work instructions geared to the intellectual level of the performer and background training aids for psychological task preparedness. The first two sections of the report discuss the origin of JPAs and the principles of task…

Evidence for situational specificity of personality-jobperformance relations calls for better understanding of how personality is expressed as valued work behavior. On the basis of an interactionist principle of trait activation (R. P. Tett & H. A. Guterman, 2000), a model is proposed that distinguishes among 5 situational features relevant to trait expression (job demands, distracters, constraints, releasers, and facilitators), operating at task, social, and organizational levels. Trait-expressive work behavior is distinguished from (valued) jobperformance in clarifying the conditions favoring personality use in selection efforts. The model frames linkages between situational taxonomies (e.g., J. L. Holland's [1985] RIASEC model) and the Big Five and promotes useful discussion of critical issues, including situational specificity, personality-oriented job analysis, team building, and work motivation. PMID:12814298

Teachers are at high risk for stress, negative emotion, and job dissatisfaction, which has been linked with health problems and early attrition. Humor has been found to relieve various forms of stress. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding humor effects on teacher stress and its related consequences. The purpose of this quantitative,…

Like other disciplines, organizational and technological innovations have influenced the standard philosophies of librarianship. These innovations have changed the basics of information retrieval and delivery in libraries. As a result, library authorities are demanding competency-based jobperformance. Nonetheless, there is a scarcity of research…

The relationship between type of work (work-study, university employment, and food service) and academic performance was examined to determine whether students with different types of jobs at Iowa State differed in their cumulative grade-point averages. They did not differ among themselves or from the nonworking students. (MLW)

Provides directions for conducting a workshop providing technical training in a large organization that links jobperformances to work processes. Organizational levels of performance are discussed; relationship maps and process maps are explained; and an example of a workshop for a software maintenance environment is presented. (two references)…

This qualitative study explored how employees learn from Team Primacy Concept (TPC) based employee evaluation and how they use the feedback in performing their jobs. TPC based evaluation is a form of multirater evaluation, during which the employee's performance is discussed by one's peers in a face-to-face team setting. The study used Kolb's…

The underlying theories of learning and performance are quite complex. This paper proposes a model that links the learning organization theory as a process with job satisfaction as a performance theory outcome. The literature reviewed considered three process levels of learning within the learning organization and three outcome levels of job…

Results of a study correlating work behaviors, performance appraisals and results of civil service promotion examinations suggest that exam scores are not sufficient and should not be the sole determinant of promotions. Work behaviors and jobperformance are time consuming to assess but should also be considered as civil service promotion…

Expansion and modification of a 27-item Delphi derived form for assessing campus police performance resulted in a 43-item form to measure jobperformance of correctional officers in the Georgia Department of Corrections. The self-rating scale, with a reliability coefficient of .995 (n=120) was subjected to factor analysis and varimax rotation and…

The present article aims to show the importance of positive work-related experiences within occupational health psychology by examining the relationship between flow at work (i.e., absorption, work enjoyment, and intrinsic work motivation) and jobperformance. On the basis of the literature, it was hypothesized that (a) motivating job characteristics are positively related to flow at work and (b) conscientiousness moderates the relationship between flow and other ratings of (in-role and out-of-role) performance. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 113 employees from several occupations. Results of moderated structural equation modeling analyses generally supported the hypotheses. Motivating job characteristics were predictive of flow, and flow predicted in-role and extra-role performance, for only conscientious employees. PMID:16834474

The present study examines whether negative and positive affectivity (NA and PA, respectively) predict different forms of work-to-family conflict (WFC-time, WFC-strain, WFC-behavior) and enrichment (WFE-development, WFE-affect, WFE-capital) beyond job characteristics (workload, autonomy, variety, workplace support). Furthermore, interactions between job characteristics and trait affectivity while predicting WFC and WFE were examined. Using a large sample of Slovenian employees (N = 738), NA and PA were found to explain variance in WFC as well as in WFE above and beyond job characteristics. More precisely, NA significantly predicted WFC, whereas PA significantly predicted WFE. In addition, several interactive effects were found to predict forms of WFC and WFE. These results highlight the importance of trait affectivity in work-family research. They provide further support for the crucial impact of job characteristics as well. PMID:23469478

The aim of this study was to explore whether work characteristics (job demands, job control, social support) comprising Karasek and Theorell's (1990) Job Demands-Control-Support framework predict employee safety performance (safety compliance and safety participation; Neal and Griffin, 2006). We used cross-sectional data of self-reported work characteristics and employee safety performance from 280 healthcare staff (doctors, nurses, and administrative staff) from Emergency Departments of seven hospitals in the United Kingdom. We analyzed these data using a structural equation model that simultaneously regressed safety compliance and safety participation on the main effects of each of the aforementioned work characteristics, their two-way interactions, and the three-way interaction among them, while controlling for demographic, occupational, and organizational characteristics. Social support was positively related to safety compliance, and both job control and the two-way interaction between job control and social support were positively related to safety participation. How work design is related to employee safety performance remains an important area for research and provides insight into how organizations can improve workplace safety. The current findings emphasize the importance of the co-worker in promoting both safety compliance and safety participation. PMID:22269573

Energy is emerging as a topic of importance to organizations, yet we have little understanding of how energy can be useful at an interpersonal level toward achieving workplace goals. We present the results of 4 studies aimed at developing, validating, and testing the relational energy construct. In Study 1, we report qualitative insights from 64 individuals about the experience and functioning of relational energy in the workplace. Study 2 draws from 3 employee samples to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on a measure of relational energy, differentiating relational energy from related constructs. To test the predictive validity of the new relational energy scale, Study 3 comprises data from employees rating the level of relational energy they experienced during interactions with their leaders in a health services context. Results showed that relational energy employees experienced with their leaders at Time 1 predicted job engagement at Time 2 (1 month later), while controlling for the competing construct of perceived social support. Study 4 shows further differentiation of relational energy from leader-member exchange (LMX), replicates the positive relationship between relational energy (Time 1) and job engagement (Time 2), and shows that relational energy is positively associated with employee jobperformance (Time 3) through the mechanism of job engagement. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and highlight areas for future research. PMID:26098165

Data from 622 workers (83% in hospitals, 17% banks) showed that workers who perform emotional labor (requiring public contact and production of emotional state in customers) are no more likely to suffer emotional exhaustion, especially those with higher job autonomy. Women and those with high autonomy express more job satisfaction. Self-selection…

The present study investigates the relationship between the emotional labor strategies surface acting and deep acting and organizational outcomes, specifically, employees' overall jobperformance and turnover. Call center employees from two large financial service organizations completed an online survey about their use of surface and deep acting.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact that stuttering has on jobperformance and employability. The method involved administration of a 17-item survey that was completed by 232 people who stutter, age 18 years or older. Results indicated that more than 70% of people who stutter agreed that stuttering decreases one's chances of being…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether perceptions of role involvement by police patrolmen were significantly related to either future or concurrent jobperformance. A secondary objective was to analyze changes in the perceived role involvement of new patrolmen during their assimilation into a police organization. The perceived…

Prior research on job insecurity has demonstrated its detrimental effects on both employees and the organization, yet no research has detailed how people actively deal with it. Drawing from proactivity research, this article argues that job insecurity prompts a proactive use of impression management tactics in the workplace. The effectiveness of these tactics depends on the level of supervisory liking for the employee and the attributions supervisors make regarding the employee's motives for the impression management behaviors (i.e., for the good of the organization or for self-interest). A 3-wave survey study of 271 Chinese employees and their supervisors showed that employees experiencing job insecurity in Time 1 reported using a variety of tactics to impress their supervisors at Time 2 and that these tactics curbed the affect associated with job insecurity and enhanced supervisor rated performance, through supervisor's liking and attributed motives. The relationship between impression management and increased supervisor-rated performance was moderated by supervisor attributions; the relationship between impression management and reduced affectivejob insecurity depended on supervisor liking. PMID:23731028

Computational grids hold great promise in utilizing geographically separated heterogeneous resources to solve large-scale complex scientific problems. However, a number of major technical hurdles, including distributed resource management and effective job scheduling, stand in the way of realizing these gains. In this paper, we propose a novel grid superscheduler architecture and three distributed job migration algorithms. We also model the critical interaction between the superscheduler and autonomous local schedulers. Extensive performance comparisons with ideal, central, and local schemes using real workloads from leading computational centers are conducted in a simulation environment. Additionally, synthetic workloads are used to perform a detailed sensitivity analysis of our superscheduler. Several key metrics demonstrate that substantial performance gains can be achieved via smart superscheduling in distributed computational grids.

We study the role of individual reaction rates on engine performance, with an emphasis on the contribution of quantum tunneling. It is demonstrated that the effect of quantum tunneling corrections for the reaction HO2 + HO2 = H2O2 + O2 can have a noticeable impact on the performance of a high-fidelity model of a compression-ignition (e.g., diesel) engine, and that an accurate prediction of ignition delay time for the engine model requires an accurate estimation of the tunneling correction for this reaction. The three-dimensional model includes detailed descriptions of the chemistry of a surrogate for a biodiesel fuel, as well as all the features of the engine, such as the liquid fuel spray and turbulence. This study is part of a larger investigation of how the features of the dynamics and potential energy surfaces of key reactions, as well as their reaction rate uncertainties, affect engine performance, and results in these directions are also presented here. PMID:26283246

A disparity exists in the educational qualifications of dental assistants working in various public and private institutions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of professional and personal characteristics on job satisfaction among dental assistants. A cross-sectional survey was performed among dental assistants using a 24-item self-administered questionnaire. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between overall job satisfaction and other variables. The overall response rate was 72.1%. Factor analysis suggested that five underlying factors were related to job satisfaction. The mean score for overall job satisfaction was 3.86 (satisfied) out of 5. Among the work environment factors, the highest mean score, 4.26 (satisfied), was obtained for quality of service, and the lowest mean score, 2.78 (neutral), was obtained for the perception of income. The income and general prospects of the profession was significantly associated with overall job satisfaction. This study suggests that for dental assistants, professional and personal life, quality of service, perception of income and prestige and self-respect are important factors for job satisfaction. Despite differences in professional formation standards, in general, the study participants were considerably satisfied with their jobs. PMID:24747371

A disparity exists in the educational qualifications of dental assistants working in various public and private institutions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of professional and personal characteristics on job satisfaction among dental assistants. A cross-sectional survey was performed among dental assistants using a 24-item self-administered questionnaire. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between overall job satisfaction and other variables. The overall response rate was 72.1%. Factor analysis suggested that five underlying factors were related to job satisfaction. The mean score for overall job satisfaction was 3.86 (satisfied) out of 5. Among the work environment factors, the highest mean score, 4.26 (satisfied), was obtained for quality of service, and the lowest mean score, 2.78 (neutral), was obtained for the perception of income. The income and general prospects of the profession was significantly associated with overall job satisfaction. This study suggests that for dental assistants, professional and personal life, quality of service, perception of income and prestige and self-respect are important factors for job satisfaction. Despite differences in professional formation standards, in general, the study participants were considerably satisfied with their jobs. PMID:24747371

This study examines the level of administrative staff jobperformance in South West Nigerian universities and also investigates whether the administrative staff jobperformance is related to their sexual characteristics. An instrument titled JobPerformance Questionnaire (JPQ) was used to collect the data and was administered 400 subjects in…

... 29 Labor 4 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. 1620.18... THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.18 Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. (a) In general. In order for the equal pay standard to apply, the jobs are required to be performed under similar...

... 29 Labor 4 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. 1620.18... THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.18 Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. (a) In general. In order for the equal pay standard to apply, the jobs are required to be performed under similar...

... 29 Labor 4 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. 1620.18... THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.18 Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. (a) In general. In order for the equal pay standard to apply, the jobs are required to be performed under similar...

... 29 Labor 4 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. 1620.18... THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.18 Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. (a) In general. In order for the equal pay standard to apply, the jobs are required to be performed under similar...

... 29 Labor 4 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. 1620.18... THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.18 Jobsperformed under similar working conditions. (a) In general. In order for the equal pay standard to apply, the jobs are required to be performed under similar...

Sub-Saharan Africans living in Belgium (N = 69) completed a culture-free intelligence test in a simulated job selection environment. Prior to testing, the authors instructed participants that Africans' average performance on this test was generally better (positive comparison), worse (negative comparison), or equal to Belgians' performance. In a control condition, no such information was given. Results indicated that, compared with the equal and control conditions, performance was lower when intergroup comparisons were negative. In the former condition, participants were also more likely to endorse external factors that may account for lower performance. The authors interpreted the findings in line with stereotype threat theory (C. M. Steele & J. Aronson, 1995). In the context of job selection, the validity of intelligence tests conducted with members of stigmatized groups may be affected by the salience of social stereotypes and intergroup social comparisons. PMID:17933401

The processes linking job characteristics to school performance and satisfaction in a sample of 253 full-time college students were examined from 2 role theory perspectives, 1 of which emphasized resource scarcity and the other resource expansion. Model tests using structural equation modeling showed that 2 resource-enriching job characteristics, job-school congruence and job control, were positively related to work-school facilitation (WSF). Two resource-depleting job characteristics, job demands and work hours, were positively related to work-school conflict (WSC), and job control was negatively related to WSC. In turn, WSF was positively related to school performance and satisfaction, and WSC was negatively related to school performance. Both WSF and WSC mediated the relationship between the job characteristics and school outcomes. There was no evidence of interactive effects between enriching and depleting job characteristics on interrole processes. PMID:17371094

Objective: Human resources are the most vital resource of any organizations which determine how other resources are used to accomplish organizational goals. This research aimed to identity factors affecting health workers’ motivation in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBUMS). Method: This is a cross-sectional survey conducted with participation of 212 health workers of Tehran health centers in November and December 2011. The data collection tool was a researcher-developed questionnaire that included 17 motivating factors and 6 demotivating factors and 8 questions to assess the current status of some factors. Validity and reliability of the tool were confirmed. Data were analyzed with descriptive and analytical statistical tests. Results: The main motivating factors for health workers were good management, supervisors and managers’ support and good working relationship with colleagues. On the other hand, unfair treatment, poor management and lack of appreciation were the main demotivating factors. Furthermore, 47.2% of health workers believed that existing schemes for supervision were unhelpful in improving their performance. Conclusion: Strengthening management capacities in health services can increase job motivation and improve health workers’ performance. The findings suggests that special attention should be paid to some aspects such as management competencies, social support in the workplace, treating employees fairly and performance management practices, especially supervision and performance appraisal. PMID:25948438

The literature concerning the relationship between emotional exhaustion and performance led researchers to raise questions about the extent to which the variables are related. In 2 time-lagged samples, the authors found that motivation mediates the emotional exhaustion-jobperformance relationship. Moreover, the authors found that participants appear to target their investment of resources in response to emotional exhaustion to develop social support through social exchange; specifically, emotional exhaustion was associated with communion striving resources that were manifest in the form of organizational citizenship behaviors targeted at individuals. Implications of this relationship for theories of burnout and for management practice are discussed. PMID:17227154

A study investigated the relationship between avionics subsystem design characteristics and training time, training cost, and jobperformance. A list of design variables believed to affect training and jobperformance was established and supplemented with personnel variables, including aptitude test scores and the amount of training and…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relations between principals' perceived autonomy support from superintendents, affective commitment to their school districts, and job satisfaction. We also explore possible moderation effects of principals' career experiences on these relations. Data were collected from K-12 public school principals in…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of teachers as to how the leadership of their principal affects their job satisfaction. This study collected the view of teachers at different career stages and examined their perceptions and needs. The participants consisted of 12 elementary school teachers at three different…

Explains performance-centered learning (PCL), an approach to optimize support for performance on the job by making corporate assets available to knowledge workers so they can solve actual problems. Illustrates PCL with a Web site that provides just-in-time learning, collaboration, and performance support tools to improve performance at the…

... 29 Labor 3 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Work performed away from the premises or job site. 785.12 Section 785.12 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR... premises or job site. The rule is also applicable to work performed away from the premises or the job...

... 29 Labor 3 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Work performed away from the premises or job site. 785.12 Section 785.12 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR... premises or job site. The rule is also applicable to work performed away from the premises or the job...

... 29 Labor 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Work performed away from the premises or job site. 785.12 Section 785.12 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR... premises or job site. The rule is also applicable to work performed away from the premises or the job...

This paper describes the followership style and jobperformance in Botswana private universities. Attempt was made to determine if there is a significant relationship between followership styles in relation to jobperformance. A total of 102 randomly selected lecturers from the two private universities completed followership and job performance…

The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between job satisfaction levels of sports officers and sports performance of secondary schools in Lagos State. Data were collected from 200 subjects across 10 Local Education Districts. Job Descriptive Index was used to determine job satisfaction while performance in the Principals' Soccer…

Background: There is an absence of research concerning the assessment of housing support worker jobperformance, particularly in the development of jobperformance measures that reflect the priorities of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Method: A worker-oriented job analysis method was used to develop four short job…

This study examined the effects of performance appraisal feedback on job and organizational attitudes of tellers (N = 329) in a large international bank. Negative affectivity moderated the link between favorable appraisal feedback and job attitudes. Among the higher rated performers, attitudes were improved 1 month after being notified of favorable appraisal results (Time 2). Improved attitudes persisted 6 months after the performance appraisal (Time 3) among tellers with low negative affectivity but not among those with high negative affectivity. Among the lower rated performers, mean levels of attitudes did not change significantly during the study. PMID:11924542

This study extends the literature on personality and jobperformance through the use of random coefficient modeling to test the validity of the Big Five personality traits in predicting overall sales performance and sales performance trajectories--or systematic patterns of performance growth--in 2 samples of pharmaceutical sales representatives at maintenance and transitional job stages (K. R. Murphy, 1989). In the maintenance sample, conscientiousness and extraversion were positively associated with between-person differences in total sales, whereas only conscientiousness predicted performance growth. In the transitional sample, agreeableness and openness to experience predicted overall performance differences and performance trends. All effects remained significant with job tenure statistically controlled. Possible explanations for these findings are offered, and theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed. PMID:15506864

Despite the growing literature on workplace aggression and the importance of employee performance at work, few studies have examined the relation between workplace aggression and jobperformance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations between psychological aggression at work and two forms of jobperformance (task performance and contextual performance) and potential mediators of these relations. Based on Conservation of Resources theory and prior research, a model was developed and tested in which overall job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment) and overall personal health (i.e., physical and psychological health) fully mediate the relations between exposure to psychological aggression at work and both task performance and contextual performance. Data were obtained from a national probability sample of US workers (N = 2376) and the model was tested using structural equation modelling. The results supported the hypothesized model, demonstrating that exposure to psychological aggression at work negatively predicted both task performance and contextual performance, and that these relations were explained by decrements in job attitudes and health associated with exposure to psychological aggression at work. PMID:21643471

Researchers identified high and low preference jobs using a video web-based assessment program with three young adults ages 18 to 19 with intellectual disabilities. Individual participants were then taught to perform high and low preference jobs in community locations. The order of 25-min high and low preference job sessions was randomized. A…

A study examined the impact of a simulated aging experience on nursing staff perceptions of job satisfaction and jobperformance. It was hypothesized that nurses and nurse aides who participated in the simulated aging experience would be more satisfied with their jobs and would receive fewer complaints from residents than those who did not…

Although research has shown that individual jobperformance changes over time, the extent of such changes is unknown. In this article, the authors define and distinguish between the concepts of temporal consistency, stability, and test-retest reliability when considering individual jobperformance ratings over time. Furthermore, the authors examine measurement type (i.e., subjective and objective measures) and job complexity in relation to temporal consistency, stability, and test-retest reliability. On the basis of meta-analytic results, the authors found that the test-retest reliability of these ratings ranged from .83 for subjective measures in low-complexity jobs to .50 for objective measures in high-complexity jobs. The stability of these ratings over a 1-year time lag ranged from .85 to .67. The analyses also reveal that correlations between performance measures decreased as the time interval between performance measurements increased, but the estimates approached values greater than zero. PMID:15769237

We investigated the extent to which the safety performance (i.e., self-reported safety compliance and safety participation) of employees with 2 jobs was predicted by their respective supervisors' transformational leadership behaviors. We compared 2 within-person models: a context-specific model (i.e., transformational leadership experienced by employees in 1 context related to those same employees' safety performance only in that context) and a context-spillover model (i.e., transformational leadership experienced by employees in 1 context related to those same employees' safety performance in the same and other contexts). Our sample comprised 159 "moonlighters" (73 men, 86 women): employees who simultaneously hold 2 different jobs, each with a different supervisor, providing within-person data on the influence of different supervisors on employee safety performance across 2 job contexts. Having controlled for individual differences (negative affectivity and conscientiousness) and work characteristics (e.g., hours worked and length of relationship with supervisor), the context-specific model provided the best fit to the data among alternative nested models. Implications for the role of transformational leadership in promoting workplace safety are discussed. PMID:20604634

The major purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between person-job fit in new teacher hires, those teachers' perceptions of job satisfaction and the resulting student academic achievement. The survey of teachers and principals was conducted by the Texas Public Schools Research Network (TPSRN). TPSRN received over 729 responses…

Occupational risk factors, such as awkward posture, repetition, lack of rest, insufficient illumination and heavy workload related to construction-related MMH activities may cause musculoskeletal disorders and poor performance of the workers, ergonomic design of construction worksystems was a critical need for improving their health and safety wherein a dynamic biomechanical models were required to be empirically developed and tested at a construction site of Tata Steel, the largest steel making company of India in private sector. In this study, a comprehensive framework is proposed for biomechanical evaluation of shovelling and grinding under diverse work environments. The benefit of such an analysis lies in its usefulness in setting guidelines for designing such jobs with minimization of risks of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and enhancing correct methods of carrying out the jobs leading to reduced fatigue and physical stress. Data based on direct observations and videography were collected for the shovellers and grinders over a number of workcycles. Compressive forces and moments for a number of segments and joints are computed with respect to joint flexion and extension. The results indicate that moments and compressive forces at L5/S1 link are significant for shovellers while moments at elbow and wrist are significant for grinders. PMID:22317733

Two divergent ideas explain the relationship between performance and voluntary turnover. One suggests that higher performing employees, who are rewarded for their superior work product, will desire to remain with an organization that values their performance and will, consequently, be less likely than lower performing employees to voluntarily leave. An alternative idea suggests that higher performing employees, who are more desirable to external companies as a result of their superior work product, will have more external job opportunities and will, consequently, be more likely than their lower performing colleagues to voluntarily leave. The current study evaluated the behaviors and attitudes of 12,545 insurance employees over a 3-year period to examine how these 2 divergent expectations influence the performance-voluntary turnover relationship. Results show that both pay growth and the relevant unemployment rate interact with performance to influence the performance-voluntary turnover relationship and that they work independently of employee job satisfaction influences. PMID:20476825

Jobperformance aids (JPAs) have been studied for many decades in a variety of disciplines and for many different types of tasks, yet this is the first known research experiment using JPAs in a quality assurance (QA) context. The objective of this thesis was to assess whether a JPA has an effect on the performance of a QA observer performing the concurrent dual verification technique for a basic assembly task. The JPA used in this study was a simple checklist, and the design borrows heavily from prior research on task analysis and other human factors principles. The assembly task and QA construct of concurrent dual verification are consistent with those of a high consequence manufacturing environment. Results showed that the JPA had only a limited effect on QA performance in the context of this experiment. However, there were three important and unexpected findings that may draw interest from a variety of practitioners. First, a novel testing methodology sensitive enough to measure the effects of a JPA on performance was created. Second, the discovery that there are different probabilities of detection for different types of error in a QA context may be the most far-reaching results. Third, these results highlight the limitations of concurrent dual verification as a control against defects. It is hoped that both the methodology and results of this study are an effective baseline from which to launch future research activities.

The relationship between general cognitive ability and both training and jobperformance is reviewed. Existing scientific data show that there are large differences in training achievement and in jobperformance. Consequently, any good predictor of achievement or performance can yield a large gain in workforce productivity. General cognitive…

Many previous studies have shown that meditation practice has a positive impact on cognitive and non-cognitive functioning, which are related to jobperformance. Thus, the aims of this study were to (1) estimate the prevalence of meditation practice, (2) identify the characteristics of individuals who practice meditation, and (3) examine the association between meditation practice and jobperformance. Two population-based, cross-sectional surveys were conducted. In study 1, we examined the prevalence of meditation practice and the characteristics of the persons practicing meditation; in Study 2, we examined the association between meditation practice and jobperformance. The outcome variables included work engagement, subjective jobperformance, and job satisfaction. The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale was used to assess work engagement, the World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) was used to measure subjective jobperformance, and a scale developed by the Japanese government was used to assess job satisfaction. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used in Study 2. Demographic characteristics and behavioral risk factors were included as covariates in the analyses. The results of Study 1 indicated that 3.9% of persons surveyed (n = 30,665) practiced meditation; these individuals were younger and had a higher education, higher household income, higher stress level, and lower body mass index than those who did not practice meditation. The results of Study 2 (n = 1,470) indicated that meditation practice was significantly predictive of work engagement (β = 0.112, p < .001), subjective jobperformance (β = 0.116, p < .001), and job satisfaction (β = 0.079, p = .002), even after adjusting for covariates (β = 0.083, p < .001; β = 0.104, p < .001; β = 0.060, p = .015, respectively). The results indicate that meditation practice may positively influence jobperformance, including job satisfaction, subjective jobperformance

Many previous studies have shown that meditation practice has a positive impact on cognitive and non-cognitive functioning, which are related to jobperformance. Thus, the aims of this study were to (1) estimate the prevalence of meditation practice, (2) identify the characteristics of individuals who practice meditation, and (3) examine the association between meditation practice and jobperformance. Two population-based, cross-sectional surveys were conducted. In study 1, we examined the prevalence of meditation practice and the characteristics of the persons practicing meditation; in Study 2, we examined the association between meditation practice and jobperformance. The outcome variables included work engagement, subjective jobperformance, and job satisfaction. The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale was used to assess work engagement, the World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) was used to measure subjective jobperformance, and a scale developed by the Japanese government was used to assess job satisfaction. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used in Study 2. Demographic characteristics and behavioral risk factors were included as covariates in the analyses. The results of Study 1 indicated that 3.9% of persons surveyed (n = 30,665) practiced meditation; these individuals were younger and had a higher education, higher household income, higher stress level, and lower body mass index than those who did not practice meditation. The results of Study 2 (n = 1,470) indicated that meditation practice was significantly predictive of work engagement (β = 0.112, p < .001), subjective jobperformance (β = 0.116, p < .001), and job satisfaction (β = 0.079, p = .002), even after adjusting for covariates (β = 0.083, p < .001; β = 0.104, p < .001; β = 0.060, p = .015, respectively). The results indicate that meditation practice may positively influence jobperformance, including job satisfaction, subjective jobperformance

There is a direct correlation between the variables of teacher job satisfaction and student academic achievement (Brookover & Lezotte, 1979; Mertler, 2002; Wynne, 1980). One would assume that schools that are not making AYP are doing everything possible to be removed from this status. One may also hypothesize that teacher job satisfaction is…

Does task significance increase jobperformance? Correlational designs and confounded manipulations have prevented researchers from assessing the causal impact of task significance on jobperformance. To address this gap, 3 field experiments examined the performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions of task significance. In Experiment 1, fundraising callers who received a task significance intervention increased their levels of jobperformance relative to callers in 2 other conditions and to their own prior performance. In Experiment 2, task significance increased the job dedication and helping behavior of lifeguards, and these effects were mediated by increases in perceptions of social impact and social worth. In Experiment 3, conscientiousness and prosocial values moderated the effects of task significance on the performance of new fundraising callers. The results provide fresh insights into the effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions of task significance, offering noteworthy implications for theory, research, and practice on job design, social information processing, and work motivation and performance. PMID:18211139

This report presents data concerning the validity of a set of experimental computerized and paper-and-pencil tests for measures of on-jobperformance on global and job elements. It reports on the usefulness of 30 experimental and operational variables for predicting marks on 42 job elements and on a global criterion for Electrician's Mate,…

The field level extension agents (FLEAs) are the lifeline of the agricultural extension system in Nigeria. Their motivation and jobperformance are therefore important to achieving faster agricultural development in Nigeria. The study identified the factors motivating the FLEAs working with Ogun State Agricultural development programme (OGADEP)…

Predictive bias studies have generally suggested that cognitive ability test scores overpredict jobperformance of African Americans, meaning these tests are not predictively biased against African Americans. However, at least 2 issues call into question existing over-/underprediction evidence: (a) a bias identified by Aguinis, Culpepper, and Pierce (2010) in the intercept test typically used to assess over-/underprediction and (b) a focus on the level of observed validity instead of operational validity. The present study developed and utilized a method of assessing over-/underprediction that draws on the math of subgroup regression intercept differences, does not rely on the biased intercept test, allows for analysis at the level of operational validity, and can use meta-analytic estimates as input values. Therefore, existing meta-analytic estimates of key parameters, corrected for relevant statistical artifacts, were used to determine whether African American jobperformance remains overpredicted at the level of operational validity. African American jobperformance was typically overpredicted by cognitive ability tests across levels of job complexity and across conditions wherein African American and White regression slopes did and did not differ. Because the present study does not rely on the biased intercept test and because appropriate statistical artifact corrections were carried out, the present study's results are not affected by the 2 issues mentioned above. The present study represents strong evidence that cognitive ability tests generally overpredict jobperformance of African Americans. PMID:25150378

The first purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of individual characteristics, i.e., positive and negative affectivity, in explaining the different perception of job control and job demands in a particularly demanding environment such as the healthcare setting. In addition, we aimed to explore the mediational role of work engagement and workaholism using the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framework. Data were collected using a sample of 269 Italian head physicians working in nine general hospitals. To test our hypotheses, the collected data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Moreover, Sobel Test and bootstrapping were employed to assess the mediating hypotheses. Our results indicated that positive affectivity is related to work engagement, which, in its turn, showed a positive association with job control. In addition, workaholism mediated the relationship between negative affectivity and job demands. All in all, this study represents a first attempt to explore the role of trait affectivity as a dispositional characteristic able to foster the level of work engagement and workaholism exhibited by employees and, in turn, to increase the perceived levels of job control and job demands. PMID:27275828

The first purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of individual characteristics, i.e., positive and negative affectivity, in explaining the different perception of job control and job demands in a particularly demanding environment such as the healthcare setting. In addition, we aimed to explore the mediational role of work engagement and workaholism using the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framework. Data were collected using a sample of 269 Italian head physicians working in nine general hospitals. To test our hypotheses, the collected data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Moreover, Sobel Test and bootstrapping were employed to assess the mediating hypotheses. Our results indicated that positive affectivity is related to work engagement, which, in its turn, showed a positive association with job control. In addition, workaholism mediated the relationship between negative affectivity and job demands. All in all, this study represents a first attempt to explore the role of trait affectivity as a dispositional characteristic able to foster the level of work engagement and workaholism exhibited by employees and, in turn, to increase the perceived levels of job control and job demands. PMID:27275828

This study investigates the joint effect of office type (cell, shared room, open-plan, and flex) and personality, measured by the Big Five personality traits, on self-rated measures of distraction, job satisfaction, and jobperformance (measured by professional efficacy). Regression analyses with interactions between personality and office type were conducted on 1205 participants working in 5 organizations from both the private and public sectors. While few interactions were observed in the cases of professional efficacy and job satisfaction, several were observed between personality traits and office type on the level of distraction reported. Specifically, more emotionally stable participants reported lower distraction, particularly those working in flex offices. Both agreeableness and openness to experience were associated with higher levels of distraction among participants in open-plan compared to cell offices. PMID:27223898

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two important outcomes of individual skills-based volunteerism (ISB-V) among healthcare volunteers in Malaysia. The outcomes are: jobperformance and life satisfaction. This study has empirically tested the impact of individual dimensions of ISB-V along with their inter-relationships in explaining the life satisfaction and jobperformance. Besides, the effects of employer encouragement to the volunteers, demographic characteristics of volunteers, and self-esteem of volunteers on jobperformance and life satisfaction have been studied. The data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to 1000 volunteers of St. John Ambulance in Malaysia. Three hundred and sixty six volunteers responded by giving their feedback. The model was tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The main results of this study are: (1) Volunteer duration and nature of contact affects life satisfaction, (2) volunteer frequency has impact on volunteer duration, (3) self-esteem of volunteers has significant relationships with volunteer frequency, jobperformance and life satisfaction, (4) jobperformance of volunteers affect their life satisfaction and (5) current employment level has significant relationships with duration of volunteering, self esteem, employer encouragement and jobperformance of volunteers. The model in this study has been able to explain 39% of the variance in life satisfaction and 45% of the variance in jobperformance. The current study adds significantly to the body of knowledge on healthcare volunteerism. PMID:24194894

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two important outcomes of individual skills-based volunteerism (ISB-V) among healthcare volunteers in Malaysia. The outcomes are: jobperformance and life satisfaction. This study has empirically tested the impact of individual dimensions of ISB-V along with their inter-relationships in explaining the life satisfaction and jobperformance. Besides, the effects of employer encouragement to the volunteers, demographic characteristics of volunteers, and self-esteem of volunteers on jobperformance and life satisfaction have been studied. The data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to 1000 volunteers of St. John Ambulance in Malaysia. Three hundred and sixty six volunteers responded by giving their feedback. The model was tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The main results of this study are: (1) Volunteer duration and nature of contact affects life satisfaction, (2) volunteer frequency has impact on volunteer duration, (3) self-esteem of volunteers has significant relationships with volunteer frequency, jobperformance and life satisfaction, (4) jobperformance of volunteers affect their life satisfaction and (5) current employment level has significant relationships with duration of volunteering, self esteem, employer encouragement and jobperformance of volunteers. The model in this study has been able to explain 39% of the variance in life satisfaction and 45% of the variance in jobperformance. The current study adds significantly to the body of knowledge on healthcare volunteerism. PMID:24194894

An extensive commitment to nonwork roles was negatively associated with the jobperformance of 182 women legal secretaries. In addition to its direct negative effect on jobperformance, nonwork role commitment had both a negative indirect effect (through emotional energy expended on nonwork roles) and a positive indirect effect (through resources…

Addressing numerous calls for future research on understanding the theoretical mechanisms that explain the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and jobperformance, this study focused on how an employee's relationships with coworkers mediate the relationship between his or her OCBs and his or her jobperformance. It…

Although many possibilities exist for the design of Coriolis flowmeters, a common set of fundamental physical principles affect practical meter design. Design criteria such as tube geometry, alloy section, operating frequencies, stress levels, and tubing wall thickness have varying impacts on meter performance. Additionally, field conditions such as changing temperature, pressure, pipeline stress and vibration affect measurement performance. The challenge created in Coriolis flow meter design is to maximize the sensitivity of the meter Coriolis forces, while minimizing the impact of outside environmental influences. Data are presented on the physical principles that affect Coriolis flowmeters, and how the various aspects of meter design influence field performance.

When a student is performing in the psychomotor domain, the authors believe the student is also performing in the cognitive domain (sequencing steps, evaluating the situation) and in the affective domain (appreciating a job well done, quality control, safety). As Dabney Doty, former instructor at the University of Central Missouri, stated, "There…

Objectives: This research explored perceived barriers to jobperformance among a national sample of nursing assistants (NAs). Specific objectives were (a) to clarify which of the problems identified by previous research are most troublesome for NAs, (b) to develop a reliable quantitative measure of perceived barriers to jobperformance, and (c) to test construct validity of the measure vis-à-vis work-related psychological empowerment and job satisfaction. Methods: Nursing assistants attending the 2006 national conference of the National Association of Health Care Assistants completed a paper-and-pencil survey including 33 barriers to jobperformance and standardized measures of empowerment and job satisfaction. The barries were also rated by a small sample of NAs at a single Georgia nursing home. Results: Factor analysis of barriers items yielded a 30-item Nursing Assistants Barriers Scale (NABS) comprising 6 subscales: Teamwork, Exclusion, Respect, Workload, Work Stress, and New NAs. Lack of teamwork and exclusion from communication processes were rated as most problematic by both samples. The 6 NABS subscales were significantly and independently associated with empowerment and satisfaction; different barriers predicted the two constructs. Discussion: This study is a first step toward quantitative assessment of NAs' perceptions of barriers to doing their jobs. Primary limitations are the select sample and use of a job satisfaction measure that may have artificially inflated correlations with the NABS. Nonetheless, results confirm the validity of the new scale as an operationalization of the barriers construct. Conclusion: The concept of barriers to jobperformance is a unique construct from work empowerment and satisfaction with one's job. Nursing assistants clearly differentiate various barriers, converging on workload and lack of teamwork as most problematic. Further work is needed to substantiate validity and reliability of the NABS, particularly with respect

The processes linking job characteristics to school performance and satisfaction in a sample of 253 full-time college students were examined from 2 role theory perspectives, 1 of which emphasized resource scarcity and the other resource expansion. Model tests using structural equation modeling showed that 2 resource-enriching job characteristics,…

Much of the evidence in support of job characteristics theory is limited to incumbent reports of job characteristics. In this study, job characteristics data from three independent sources--incumbents, ratings from job descriptions, and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles--were used. Convergent validities of incumbent reports with other sources were quite modest. Although incumbent reports of job characteristics correlated significantly with several employee outcomes (job satisfaction, work frustration, anxiety on the job, turnover intentions, and number of doctor visits), the other sources showed few significant correlations, except for number of doctor visits. Caution is urged in the use of incumbent self-reports of job characteristics as indicators of actual work environments. New methods for studying job characteristics are suggested. PMID:2016216

The present study uses the Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) to examine how job characteristics and burnout (exhaustion and cynicism) contribute to explaining variance in objective team performance. A central assumption in the model is that working characteristics evoke two psychologically different processes. In the first process, job demands lead to constant psychological overtaxing and in the long run to exhaustion. In the second process, a lack of job resources precludes actual goal accomplishment, leading to cynicism. In the present study these two processes were used to predict objective team performance. A total of 176 employees from a temporary employment agency completed questionnaires on job characteristics and burnout. These self-reports were linked to information from the company's management information system about teams' (N=71) objective sales performance (actual sales divided by the stated objectives) during the 3 months after the questionnaire data collection period. The results of structural equation modeling analyses did not support the hypothesis that exhaustion mediates the relationship between job demands and performance, but confirmed that cynicism mediates the relationship between job resources and performance suggesting that work conditions influence performance particularly through the attitudinal component of burnout. PMID:18612856

Integrating theories addressing attention and activation with creativity literature, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between creative process engagement and overall jobperformance among professionals in complex jobs in an information technology firm. Work experience moderated the curvilinear relationship, with low-experience employees…

Correlations between a jobperformance criterion and personality measures reflecting achievement motivation and an interpersonal orientation were examined at three points in time after completion of job training for a sample of airline reservations agents. Although correlations between the personality predictors and performance were small and nonsignificant for the 3-month period after beginning the job, by the end of six and eight months a number of significant relationships had emerged. Implications for the utility of personality measures in selection and performance prediction are discussed.

Despite the importance given to employment opportunities as a primary motive for migration, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the kinds of jobs that are more likely to retain workers in their countries of origin. We use information from a panel survey of Mexican adults to examine how job characteristics affect the risk of international migration. The sampling strategy and overall size of the survey allow us to analyze the effect of employment characteristics on migration from urban areas, which have much greater labor market diversity, and to separate our analysis by gender. We also distinguish migrants according to whether they migrate for work or for other reasons. We find informality to be a significant predictor of international migration. Even after controlling for individual factors including workers’ wages, as well as various household- and community-level predictors, we find that workers employed in the informal sector have significantly higher odds of migrating than their counterparts in the formal sector. The pervasive nature of informality in many developing countries from which a high proportion of international migrants originate may therefore create a constant supply of workers who are predisposed to migrate. Our findings thus have important implications for a proper understanding of the effects of economic development on migration. PMID:23073750

Despite the importance given to employment opportunities as a primary motive for migration, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the kinds of jobs that are more likely to retain workers in their countries of origin. We use information from a panel survey of Mexican adults to examine how job characteristics affect the risk of international migration. The sampling strategy and overall size of the survey allow us to analyze the effect of employment characteristics on migration from urban areas, which have much greater labor market diversity, and to separate our analysis by gender. We also distinguish migrants according to whether they migrate for work or for other reasons. We find informality to be a significant predictor of international migration. Even after controlling for individual factors including workers' wages, as well as various household- and community-level predictors, we find that workers employed in the informal sector have significantly higher odds of migrating than their counterparts in the formal sector. The pervasive nature of informality in many developing countries from which a high proportion of international migrants originate may therefore create a constant supply of workers who are predisposed to migrate. Our findings thus have important implications for a proper understanding of the effects of economic development on migration. PMID:23073750

Job rotations have existed as a means of developing individual knowledge and skills since the industrial revolution, and in today's dynamic global workplace, they afford organizations an opportunity to manage changing psychological work contracts and employee desires for self-managed careers. Through the systematic mining of psychology, business,…

One critical measure of success in workplaces is an employee's ability to use competently the knowledge, skills and values that match the needs of his job, satisfy the demands of his employer, and contribute to the overall achievement of institutional goals. An explanatory-correlational research design was used to determine the extent of…

The authors compared jobperformance and receipt of disciplinary action among smoking and nonsmoking hotel employees using organizational records and observation. Although smokers and nonsmokers did not differ on 3 measures of discipline, there were significant differences on a guest relations performance dimension and a summated overall jobperformance measure. Smokers received higher ratings than did nonsmokers. Implications of these findings for the management of smoking behavior in the workplace are discussed. PMID:12206282

The main goals of the current study were to investigate whether there are linear or curvilinear relationships between substance use disorder counselors' jobperformance and actual turnover after 1 year utilizing four indicators of jobperformance and three turnover statuses (voluntary, involuntary, and no turnover as the reference group). Using longitudinal data from 440 matched counselor-clinical supervisor dyads, results indicate that overall, counselors with lower jobperformance are more likely to turn over voluntarily and involuntarily than not to turn over. Further, one of the jobperformance measures shows a significant curvilinear effect. We conclude that the negative consequences often assumed to be "caused" by counselor turnover may be overstated because those who leave both voluntarily and involuntarily demonstrate generally lower performance than those who remain employed at their treatment program. PMID:22527711

The main goals of the current study were to investigate whether there are linear or curvilinear relationships between substance use disorder counselors’ jobperformance and actual turnover after 1 year utilizing four indicators of jobperformance and three turnover statuses (voluntary, involuntary, and no turnover as the reference group). Using longitudinal data from 440 matched counselor-clinical supervisor dyads, results indicate that overall, counselors with lower jobperformance are more likely to turn over voluntarily and involuntarily than not to turn over. Further, one of the jobperformance measures shows a significant curvilinear effect. We conclude that the negative consequences often assumed to be “caused” by counselor turnover may be overstated because those who leave both voluntarily and involuntarily demonstrate generally lower performance than those who remain employed at their treatment program. PMID:22527711

In using language, people not only exchange information, but also navigate their social world - for example, they can express themselves indirectly to avoid losing face. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the neural correlates of interpreting face-saving indirect replies, in a situation where participants only overheard the replies as part of a conversation between two other people, as well as in a situation where the participants were directly addressed themselves. We created a fictional job interview context where indirect replies serve as a natural communicative strategy to attenuate one's shortcomings, and asked fMRI participants to either pose scripted questions and receive answers from three putative job candidates (addressee condition) or to listen to someone else interview the same candidates (overhearer condition). In both cases, the need to evaluate the candidate ensured that participants had an active interest in comprehending the replies. Relative to direct replies, face-saving indirect replies increased activation in medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral middle temporal gyrus, in active overhearers and active addressees alike, with similar effect size, and comparable to findings obtained in an earlier passive listening study (Bašnáková et al., 2014). In contrast, indirectness effects in bilateral anterior insula and pregenual ACC, two regions implicated in emotional salience and empathy, were reliably stronger in addressees than in active overhearers. Our findings indicate that understanding face-saving indirect language requires additional cognitive perspective-taking and other discourse-relevant cognitive processing, to a comparable extent in active overhearers and addressees. Furthermore, they indicate that face-saving indirect language draws upon affective systems more in addressees than in overhearers, presumably because the addressee

A catastrophe model of employee withdrawal indicates that declining jobperformance, absenteeism, and turnover are discontinuous behavioral outcomes of the same withdrawal phenomenon arising from varying levels of job tension and group cohesion. The advantages of using catastrophe models to describe the temporal changes in employee withdrawal over a relatively short time period are discussed. PMID:10270900

In view of the benefit of improving employees' organization commitment, it is important to study the major influencing factors of organization commitment. According to previous literature, organizational justice and job burnout have been considered two major influencing variables of affective commitment; however, little empirical research can…

This study proposes relationships between job satisfaction, affective commitment (organization, supervisor and workgroup), and exchange relations with supervisor, organization and workgroup members among extension personnel. Perceived self-esteem (SE) is hypothesized to moderate relations between the social exchange foci and the corresponding…

This study determined the factors affecting motivation and job satisfaction of non-management academic staff of universities in South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. It employed an expost-facto research design. Three research questions and two hypotheses were raised for the study. A sample of four hundred and fifty non-management academic…

This study examined the job satisfaction of 253 Latino/a newcomers in three rural communities in the Midwest. Specifically, the authors explored the effects of ethnic identity, Anglo acculturation, Latino/a acculturation, perceptions of the community (social relations, discrimination/racism, and language pressures), job tenure, work hours, and…

For the first time in many years, Management Information Systems (MIS) students and faculty are seeking ways to improve full-time job placement for program graduates. Due to sharp IT budget cuts, the slowing economy, and outsourcing, job opportunities for MIS graduates have become scarcer than ever before. In addition to achieving good academic…

On the assumption that the verbal complexity of written examination materials used to select personnel for a job should be similar to the verbal complexity of materials that must be read and understood on the job, the Flesch Reading Ease Index was applied to samples of the reading materials required for successful entry-level jobperformance in…

Usable lifetime has long been a limitation of high efficiency photocathodes in high average current accelerator applications such as free electron lasers, where poor vacuum conditions and high incident laser power contribute to early degradation in electron beam emission. Recent progress has been made in adapting well known thermionic dispenser techniques to photocathodes, resulting in a dispenser photocathode whose photosensitive surface coating of cesium can be periodically replenished to extend effective lifetime. This article details the design and fabrication process of a prototype cesium dispenser photocathode and describes in detail the dominant factors affecting its performance: activation procedure, surface cleanliness, temperature, and substrate microstructure.

A battery of criterion referenced Job Task Performance Tests (JTPT) was developed because paper and pencil tests of job knowledge and electronic theory had very poor criterion-related or empirical validity with respect to the ability of electronic maintenance men to perform their job. Although the original JTPT required the use of actual…

Effects of interior office color and individual stimulus screening ability, i.e. instinctive perceptual filtering of irrelevant stimuli, on perceived performance and job satisfaction were examined on various outcome measures over a 4-day work week in a laboratory setting. Workers performed specific tasks and worked regular hours for 4 consecutive days in the same office. They were separated into three groups according to their ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli in the interior space. Those in the white and predominantly blue-green offices reported higher perceived jobperformance and satisfaction than those in the predominantly red office regardless of stimulus screening ability. Workers with high to moderate stimulus screening ability indicated greater perceived performance and job satisfaction than did workers with low stimulus screening ability. Results for color schemes are discussed in terms of preference and social expectations. PMID:16383082

The present study investigates the relationship between individual differences, indicated by personality (FFM) and general mental ability (GMA), and jobperformance applying two different methods of correction for range restriction. The results, derived by analyzing meta-analytic correlations, show that the more accurate method of correcting for indirect range restriction increased the operational validity of individual differences in predicting jobperformance and that this increase primarily was due to general mental ability being a stronger predictor than any of the personality traits. The estimates for single traits can be applied in practice to maximize prediction of jobperformance. Further, differences in the relative importance of general mental ability in relation to overall personality assessment methods was substantive and the estimates provided enables practitioners to perform a correct utility analysis of their overall selection procedure. PMID:22612634

This guide is designed to provide private industry councils (PICs) with information on developing workplace literacy or job-related basic skills programs. Chapter 1 contains an overview of the nation's literacy problem and how it affects business and is designed to provide PIC members with background information to use when discussing the problem…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the competencies needed by performance consultants, a particular role identified for training and development professionals. The role was formally named and promoted nearly two decades ago. Two ongoing discussions in the field are the competencies needed by training and development professionals and the role of…

The aim of the present study was to examine how job and home demands are related to psychological distress in a sample of Japanese working parents with preschool children (n=196). We expected that job and home demands are partially related to psychological distress through work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC), respectively. Structural equation modeling showed that, as expected, home demands were partially related to psychological distress, both directly and indirectly through FWC. In contrast, job demands were only directly related to psychological distress. The differences between the roles of FWC and WFC are discussed using identity theory. PMID:20616471

To examine the generalizability of stereotype threat theory findings from laboratory to applied settings, the authors developed models of the pattern of relationships between cognitive test scores and outcome criteria that would be expected if the test scores of women and minority group members were affected by stereotype threat. Two large data sets were used to test these models, one in an education setting examining SAT-grade relationships by race and gender and the other in a military job setting examining Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery-jobperformance relationships by race. Findings were not supportive of the predictions arising from stereotype threat theory, suggesting caution in positing threat as a key determinant of subgroup mean test score differences in applied settings. PMID:15065971

An account is presented of the development of a jobperformance test for the Learner Centered Instruction (LCI) weapon control systems mechanic/technician Air Force course. The performance test was administered to the LCI experimental course subjects as well as the control course subjects upon graduation. Test items are, for the most part, based…

Limited research has addressed the issue of truck drivers and their performance regarding highway safety in terms of reduced number of crashes per driver. The primary purpose of this study was to determine how tractor trailer truck drivers' jobperformance could be improved while at the same time ensuring increased revenue for the transportation…

Purpose: The present paper aims to explore the effects of state (trust in supervisor) and trait (trust propensity) trust on employees' work engagement. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate the mediating role of learning goal orientation in the relationship between work engagement and two forms of performance: in-role jobperformance and innovative…

Although the use of personality traits as criteria for performance appraisal is still dominant, behavior-oriented measures of jobperformance have become more and more popular. One such test used, Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS), seems to have two shortcomings. The individual scales are multidimensional, making it difficult for a rater…

Reports on the relationship between organizational shape or structure (tall, medium, and flat) and job satisfaction, anxiety-stress, and performance. Indicates that salesmen in flat organizations perceive more autonomy and more satisfaction with respect to self-actualization, perceive lower amounts of anxiety-stress, and perform more efficiently.…

Based on conservation of resources (COR) theory, the authors hypothesized that two aspects of the work-family interface--family-to-work conflict (FWC) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE)--are related to jobperformance. The authors also hypothesized that two variables moderate those relationships--individual differences in conscientiousness and aspects of the work environment in terms of perceived organizational support (POS). Data collected from a matched set of 136 private sector workers and their respective supervisors revealed that high FWC was more strongly related to lower jobperformance: (1) among high- than low-conscientiousness workers and (2) among workers reporting low rather than high levels of organizational support. However, FWE was unrelated to jobperformance. PMID:17059298

Addressing numerous calls for future research on understanding the theoretical mechanisms that explain the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and jobperformance, this study focused on how an employee's relationships with coworkers mediate the relationship between his or her OCBs and his or her jobperformance. It also looked at how task autonomy might moderate this mediated relationship. The results of an empirical study involving 364 jewelry designers, 310 coworkers, and 284 supervisors indicated that coworker relations mediated the relationship between OCBs and jobperformance. In addition, task autonomy positively moderated both paths of this mediated relationship. Finally, these results hold for OCBs that are targeted at individuals but not for OCBs that are targeted toward organizations. PMID:21574674

This investigation focused on womenís share in Science and Technology education and their jobperformance in Nigeria. The investigation was conducted with two questions that were raised as a guide. A sample of 4886 was drawn through the questionnaire method. Analysis of the data was conducted through the use of frequency count. Findings obtained indicated that there was disparity between male and female gender in access to Science and Technology education in Nigeria, and also that there were no differences between women and men scientists and technologists in jobperformance. The conclusion was therefore reached that women do not have equal share with men in Science and Technology education even though the male and female scientists and technologists performjobs equally in Nigeria. Recommendation was therefore made accordingly.

A national sample of 2,048 workers was asked to rate the impact of their job on their physical and mental health. Ordered logistic regression analyses based on social ecology theory showed that the workers' responses were significantly correlated with objective and subjective features of their jobs, in addition to personality characteristics. Workers who had higher levels of perceived constraints and neuroticism, worked nights or overtime, or reported serious ongoing stress at work or higher job pressure reported more negative effects. Respondents who had a higher level of extraversion, were self-employed, or worked part time or reported greater decision latitude or use of skills on the job reported more positive effects. These findings suggest that malleable features of the work environment are associated with perceived effects of work on health, even after controlling for personality traits and other sources of reporting bias. PMID:11326723

Since the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, performance measurement systems based on short-term program outcomes have been increasingly used to assess the effectiveness of federal programs. This paper examines the association between program performance measures and long-term program impacts, using nine-year follow-up data from a recent…

In higher learning education, the performance is influenced by many factors. Effective leadership has an imperative role in the better performance and growth of the organization. Yet, several performance efforts were unsuccessful as a result of factors such as satisfactory leadership style of leaders. This study was carried out to identify the…

Since 1983, discussions focused increasingly on the contribution to economic performance associated with the skills of the work force. Government policy went further by specifying skills important to economic performance and advocating their introduction into schools and training programs. Surprisingly little empirical research examined the…

Discussion of the human performance technology process focuses on interacting with clients. Describes a seven-step process that includes assessment; a performance consulting guide that explains the leadership process used in interacting with clients; and how to ask the right questions in the right order. (LRW)

Teaching is not the safe career bet that it once was. The thinking used to be: New students will always be entering the public schools, and older teachers will always be retiring, so new teachers will always be needed. But teaching jobs aren't secure enough to stand up to the "Great Recession," as this drawn-out downturn has been called. Across…

Purpose: The relationship between participation and jobperformance has captured the interest of not only business researchers but also education researchers. However, the topic has not gained significant attention in the educational management research arena. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of participation in…

The descriptively designed study was conducted in order to determine academic nurses' job satisfaction levels, intention of leaving job and effective reasons. The study was implemented in 10 nursing schools offering postgraduate and doctoral education in Turkey, and data was collected from academics working in these schools who agreed to participate in the study. After obtaining the required approval from the ethics committees and institutional permissions, data was collected from 248 academic nurses using a personal information form and a "Job Satisfaction Scale" between June 2009 and January 2010. The data was analyzed by frequency and percentage distribution, using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient, ANOVA, Qui-Square and Tukey's HSD test for advanced analysis methods with SPSS 11.5 statistics packet software. This study concludes that academic nurses are moderately satisfied with their jobs. In addition, job satisfaction was found to be lower among research assistants, assistant professors, nurses with less than 10 years of academic experience, nurses who have completed their doctorate dissertations, or who are working on appointment or contract basis. PMID:23870689

Recent accounts of trustworthiness have moved away from treating it as a stable, individual-level attribute toward viewing it as a variable situated in a relational context, but have not been formalized or supported empirically. We extend status characteristics theory (SCT) to develop formal propositions about relational trustworthiness. We posit that members of task- and collectively oriented groups (non-consciously) infer three qualities from their relative status that are commonly used to determine an individual's trustworthiness: ability, benevolence, and integrity. We apply our formalization to clarify ambiguities regarding intra-organizational job autonomy inequality, thereby linking SCT to broader disparities rooted in job autonomy. We analyze data from a vignette experiment and the General Social Survey to test incrementally how well our propositions generalize across different settings and populations. Results generally support our proposed links between status and intra-organizational job autonomy. We discuss implications for SCT in understanding broader patterns of inequalities. PMID:24468434

Across the world, people are required, or want, to work until an increasingly old age. But how might prospective employers view job applicants who have skills and qualities that they associate with older adults? This article draws on social role theory, age stereotypes and research on hiring biases, and reports three studies using age‐diverse North American participants. These studies reveal that: (1) positive older age stereotype characteristics are viewed less favorably as criteria for job hire, (2) even when the job role is low‐status, a younger stereotype profile tends to be preferred, and (3) an older stereotype profile is only considered hirable when the role is explicitly cast as subordinate to that of a candidate with a younger age profile. Implications for age‐positive selection procedures and ways to reduce the impact of implicit age biases are discussed.

In a recent article in this journal (EJ 130 391) Siegel and Bergman described a "miniature job training and evaluation" approach to performance prediction. This research highlights their methodology's strengths and weaknesses in light of standard procedures recommended in developing any set of predictors. (Author/RK)

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships among job satisfaction, professional efficacy, student and school performance, and teacher absenteeism in Mississippi. This study also addressed methods that can be used by policymakers to better ensure low rates of absenteeism. The study measured the relationship between teachers'…

This study investigated the relationship among organizational leadership styles (criterion variables), organizational culture, and employee job satisfaction, and organizational performance (predictor variables). The study research method was the quantitative method using a correlational research design that investigated the relationship among the…

This study examined the relationships among employees' emotional intelligence, their manager's emotional intelligence, employees' job satisfaction, and performance for 187 food service employees from nine different locations of the same restaurant franchise. We predicted and found that employees' emotional intelligence was positively associated…

In this research, the effects of teachers' perceptions of the diversity management on their job satisfaction and individual performance were examined. Teachers who are working in public high schools during 2014 to 2015 academic year constituted the study group of the research. The data of the research in which quantitative method used were…

In the present study, the direct effect of principal transformational leadership to school staff turnover and school performance was examined, in addition to its indirect effect through school staff job satisfaction. Survey data were obtained from elementary school staff and students, and school-aggregated student achievement test scores were…

The study aims to find out and analyze the influence of competence, motivation, and organizational competence to high school teacher job satisfaction and performance in Jayapura City, Papua, Indonesia. The study was conducted on 117 respondents of 346 teachers by means of questionnaire. Data is analyzed by SEM analysis method in AMOS program.…

In this research, the classical test theory and generalizability theory analyses were carried out with the data obtained by a jobperformance scale for the years 2005 and 2006. The reliability coefficients obtained (estimated) from the classical test theory and generalizability theory analyses were compared. In classical test theory, test retest…

Purpose: Researchers have been focusing on the predictors of expatriates' adjustment and jobperformance at different levels (individual level, organizational level and societal level), but still some of the predictors have been ignored or unclear in the expatriate literature. The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework…

The intention of the study is to identify the development of personal skills, as well as the increase of job satisfaction and productivity of the employee, as a result of their participation in high performance teams. Volunteered in the study 139 members of self-managed teams belonging to the Production Area, 39 of Operational Administrative…

Conducted as part of a major effort to test and evaluate JobPerformance Aids (JPA) and their integration with Navy personnel and training systems, this study systematically reviewed and organized existing JPA techniques, related research data, and various applicable principles and concepts. One hundred and one JPA systems and techniques were…

Layoffs and employment changes caused by current economic conditions have significant effects on employee work behavior and emotions as well as organizational outcomes. We examined the relationships between measures of job insecurity, organizational commitment, turnover, absenteeism, and worker performance within a manufacturer in Chapter 11…

Purpose: School principals make sense of multiple messages, policies, and contexts within their school environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine specifically how school leaders make sense of hiring and subjective evaluation of on-the-job teacher performance. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study drew from 42 interviews…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between quality staff development and improved student learning as reflected by increased standardized test scores in reading. The study examined the effect of structured job-embedded staff development on student performance. The causal comparative design was used to examine the linkage…

A study of college graduates working as Navy officers found that staff officers who graduated from private schools, regardless of quality, received better performance appraisals. Line officers who graduated from top-ranked public or private schools received better early-career appraisals. In both groups, graduates of top-rated private schools were…

The research literature on the psychometric properties of self-appraisals of work performance summarizes many results in terms of leniency, variability, halo, and construct validity. Comparisons with appraisals tend to show more leniency, less variability, more bias, and less discriminant validity. Different factor structures are found among self-…

Academic cheating is a serious problem among higher education organizations around the world. While most studies on academic cheating have focused on high school or college students, few have examined and compared students with and without jobs. Therefore, this study has empirically assessed the critical cheating issues by comparing undergraduate…

This study, in a manufacturing firm, examined the relative importance of three variables: role conflict, ambiguity, and overload, as sources of stress and dissatisfaction among managerial personnel, and the moderating effects of job enrichment characteristics. Results and implications for work design and stress management are discussed.…

Designed to be of value to both occupational curriculum personnel and those persons concerned with noncurriculum issues of occupational description and updating of job content information, this volume is the fourth of a five-volume set describing a systematic approach for constructing task inventories, surveying the task performance of…

Assessed the effects of two rating category attributes on halo in jobperformance ratings. Results suggested reducing halo by using rating categories that do not force raters to rely on their overall evaluation of the ratee, or use the same salient observations for rating jobperformance on multiple categories. (JAC)

This invitational conference was convened to report the principal findings of a six-year study of possible sources of bias in the prediction of jobperformance. The research was conducted jointly by Educational Testing Service and the U.S. Civil Service Commission, supported by the Ford Foundation. Data were gathered on test and jobperformance of…

When mental health counselors have limited and/or inadequate training in substance use disorders (SUDs), effective clinical supervision (ECS) may advance their professional development. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether ECS is related to the jobperformance of SUD counselors. Data were obtained in person via paper-and-pencil surveys from 392 matched SUD counselor-clinical supervisor dyads working in 27 SUD treatment organizations across the United States. ECS was rated by counselors and measured with five multi-item scales (i.e., sponsoring counselors’ careers, providing challenging assignments, role modeling, accepting/confirming counselors’ competence, overall supervisor task proficiency). Clinical supervisors rated counselors’ jobperformance, which was measured with two multi-item scales (i.e., task performance, performance within supervisory relationship). Using mixed-effects models, we found that most aspects of ECS are related to SUD counselor jobperformance. Thus, ECS may indeed enhance counselors’ task performance and performance within the supervisory relationship, and, as a consequence, offset limited formal SUD training. PMID:25061265

Although individuals after spinal cord injury (SCI) demonstrate a breadth of ability and employment potential, return-to-work (RTW) outcomes are low. In Canada, only 38% of individuals RTW after SCI. Refining the process of job suitability and enhancing job search strategies have been suggested to improve RTW outcomes. Our primary study objective was to identify occupational attributes of jobsperformed after SCI that might be used to inform vocational rehabilitation strategies and improve RTW outcomes after SCI. A secondary analysis of participants from the Study of Health and Activity in People with Spinal Cord Injury employed in an occupation for which they received pay, was conducted. Frequency distributions for various occupational attributes including physical demands and educational requirements were examined across 181 reported occupations. χ-tests identified whether the primary mode of mobility was related to occupational physical demands. Analysis of the physical demand attribute identified that 58% of occupations required sitting and 33% required sitting/standing or walking. Forty-four percent of occupations required upper or multiple limb coordination. Eighty-three percent of occupations required a limited strength capacity. Sixty percent of occupations required college education and 58% required an undergraduate university education. χ-analysis revealed nonsignificant associations between primary mode of mobility and physical demands. In conclusion, a breadth of occupational attributes in jobsperformed by individuals after SCI was identified. These results are suggested to inform future vocational rehabilitation strategies. PMID:23238668

The present study addressed employee job crafting behaviors (i.e., seeking resources, seeking challenges, and reducing demands) in the context of organizational change. We examined predictors of job crafting both at the organizational level (i.e., perceived impact of the implemented changes on the working life of employees) and the individual level (i.e., employee willingness to follow the changes). Job crafting behaviors were expected to predict task performance and exhaustion. Two-wave longitudinal data from 580 police officers undergoing organizational changes were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Findings showed that the degree to which changes influence employees' daily work was linked to reducing demands and exhaustion, whereas employee willingness to change was linked to seeking resources and seeking challenges. Furthermore, while seeking resources and seeking challenges were associated with high task performance and low exhaustion respectively, reducing demands seemed to predict exhaustion positively. Our findings suggest that job crafting can act as a strategy of employees to respond to organizational change. While seeking resources and seeking challenges enhance employee adjustment and should be encouraged by managers, reducing demands seems to have unfavorable implications for employees. PMID:25798717

The authors examined the impacts of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) strategies-elective selection, loss-based selection, optimization, and compensation-on jobperformance across adulthood. A cross-sectional survey (Study 1, N=355) and a 5-day experience sampling study (Study 2, N=87) were conducted to assess Chinese insurance sales workers' global and momentary employment of SOC strategies at work and compare the effectiveness of these strategies in predicting their jobperformance. Study 1 revealed that the use of compensation predicted higher performance maintenance among older workers, whereas the use of elective selection contributed positively to sales productivity for both age groups, with stronger association for younger workers. Study 2 demonstrated that the positive impact of SOC strategies on global and momentary measures of jobperformance differed across tasks with various difficulty levels. When the task was perceived as highly difficult, older workers' greater use of elective selection predicted higher self-rated task performance; however, the positive association was weaker among younger workers. Older workers' greater use of the 4 SOC strategies was positively associated with sales increases when the task was not difficult or moderately difficult, yet the relationship was negative when the task was highly difficult. A reverse pattern was observed among younger workers. This article contributes to the understanding of working adults' psychological adaptation to the process of aging and reveals the moderating role of task difficulty on the association between SOC strategies and performance outcomes. PMID:20025407

... duty as a Job Corps Student, what benefits may they receive? 670.910 Section 670.910 Employees' Benefits EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (CONTINUED) THE JOB CORPS UNDER TITLE... injured in the performance of duty as a Job Corps Student, what benefits may they receive? (a) Job...

... duty as a Job Corps Student, what benefits may they receive? 670.910 Section 670.910 Employees' Benefits EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (CONTINUED) THE JOB CORPS UNDER TITLE... injured in the performance of duty as a Job Corps Student, what benefits may they receive? (a) Job...

Studied the relationships among motivation, persistence, and performance in a sample of 51 German college students. Path analysis showed that initial motivation influenced persistence but that the relationship between persistence and performance was disrupted because learners with more knowledge stopped sooner. (SLD)

This research investigates the influence of shared perceptions of developmental climate on individual-level perceptions of organizational commitment, engagement, and perceived competence, and whether these attitudes mediate the relationship between developmental climate and both individual voluntary turnover and supervisor-rated jobperformance. Survey data were collected from 361 intact employee-supervisory mentoring dyads and matched with employee turnover data collected one year later to test the proposed framework using multilevel modeling techniques. As expected, shared perceptions of developmental climate were significantly and positively related to all three individual work attitudes. In addition, both organizational commitment and perceived competence were significant mediators of the positive relationship between shared perceptions of developmental climate and voluntary turnover, as well as shared perceptions of developmental climate and supervisor-rated jobperformance. By contrast, no significant mediating effects were found for engagement. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed. PMID:24748681

This research investigates the influence of shared perceptions of developmental climate on individual-level perceptions of organizational commitment, engagement, and perceived competence, and whether these attitudes mediate the relationship between developmental climate and both individual voluntary turnover and supervisor-rated jobperformance. Survey data were collected from 361 intact employee-supervisory mentoring dyads and matched with employee turnover data collected one year later to test the proposed framework using multilevel modeling techniques. As expected, shared perceptions of developmental climate were significantly and positively related to all three individual work attitudes. In addition, both organizational commitment and perceived competence were significant mediators of the positive relationship between shared perceptions of developmental climate and voluntary turnover, as well as shared perceptions of developmental climate and supervisor-rated jobperformance. By contrast, no significant mediating effects were found for engagement. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed. PMID:24748681

Background Although several studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and jobperformance (JP), it remains unclear whether this relationship is appropriate for faculty members at Chinese universities. The objectives of this study were to (a) examine the correlation between POS andJP; (b) identify the predictors of POS, including demographic and organizational characteristics among faculty members at a Chinese university; (c) investigate the influence of mediating factors between POS and JP; and (d) compare the findings of this study with related studies. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was used in this study. The questionnaire was administered to 700 faculty members who were randomly selected from all faculty members at six universities. A total of 581 questionnaires were obtained. A statistical model for JP was developed based on the literature review. Results The analysis results indicated that the relationship between POS and JP was mediated by job satisfaction (JS), positive affectivity (PA), and affective commitment (AC). In addition, procedural and distributive justice contribute to POS. Conclusions The study concludes that the relationship between POS and JP is mediated by JS, PA, and AC and is influenced by POS. These results can provide evidence for university administrators to improve POS and increase the JP of faculty members at universities. PMID:24624932

Jobperformance and production related issues are important not only to successful vocational training and ultimate job placement for individuals with cognitive disabilities, but also for their ability to have expanded vocational options. This study hypothesized that the application of Kaizen philosophy, and poka-yoke techniques in particular, could create job opportunities and improve productivity of individuals with cognitive disabilities. Poka-yoke or error-proofing techniques are part of the collection of Kaizen techniques. Kaizen refers to continuous improvement in performance, cost/effectiveness, and quality. Kaizen strives to empower the worker, increase worker satisfaction, facilitate a sense of accomplishment, and thereby create pride-of-work. These techniques typically reduce the physical and cognitive demands of a task and thereby render the task more accessible. The job was a fuel clamp assembly. A redesigned assembly fixture was the poka-yoke intervention. Consistent with poka-yoke principles, the intervention improved the productivity of everyone attempting the assembly. In particular, the workers in this study showed an 80% increase in productivity and an average percent error drop from 52% to about 1% after the process redesign. Furthermore, the workers showed improved morale, self-esteem, and pride-of-work. Prior to the process redesign, only the higher functioning workers could successfully perform the assembly. After the redesign a greater number of workers could successfully perform the assembly. These results not only validated the study hypothesis, but demonstrated that the success facilitated by applying Kaizen techniques had similar results with individuals with cognitive disabilities as with nondisabled workers. PMID:9749904

The MONARC (MOdels of Networked Analysis at Regional Centers) framework has been developed and designed with the aim to provide a tool for realistic simulations of large scale distributed computing systems, with a special focus on the Grid systems of the experiments at the CERN LHC. In this paper, we describe a usage of the MONARC framework and tools for a simulation of the job processing performance at an ALICE Tier-2 site.

Objective: To explore the impact of workplace violence on jobperformance and quality of life of community healthcare workers in China, especially the relationship of these three variables. Methods: From December 2013 to April 2014, a total of 1404 healthcare workers were recruited by using the random cluster sampling method from Community Health Centers in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The workplace violence scale, the jobperformance scale and the quality of life scale (SF-36) were self-administered. The structural equation model constructed by Amos 17.0 was employed to assess the relationship among these variables. Results: Our study found that 51.64% of the respondents had an experience of workplace violence. It was found that both jobperformance and quality of life had a negative correlation with workplace violence. A positive association was identified between jobperformance and quality of life. The path analysis showed the total effect (β = −0.243) of workplace violence on jobperformance consisted of a direct effect (β = −0.113) and an indirect effect (β = −0.130), which was mediated by quality of life. Conclusions: Workplace violence among community healthcare workers is prevalent in China. The workplace violence had negative effects on the jobperformance and quality of life of CHCs’ workers. The study suggests that improvement in the quality of life may lead to an effective reduction of the damages in jobperformance caused by workplace violence. PMID:26610538

Using trait activation theory as a framework, the authors examined the moderating role of two situational variables-perceptions of organizational politics and perceptions of leader effectiveness-on the relationship between core self-evaluations and jobperformance. Results from two samples (N = 137 and N = 226) indicate that employee perceptions of their work environment moderated the relationship between their core self-evaluations and supervisor ratings of their performance. In particular, those with higher core self-evaluations received higher performance ratings in environments perceived as favorable than in environments perceived as unfavorable. PMID:19916664

The purpose of the study described here was to: (1) determine the amount of variance in burnout and job satisfaction in public school teachers and principals which could be accounted for by stress related to the state's performance-based accreditation standards; (2) examine the relationship between stress related to state standards and the age and…

This study used data from a national survey to examine the relationship of openness regarding sexual orientation to job satisfaction, job stress, and identity for self-identified homosexual and bisexual public school teachers. A survey was sent to participants through national, state, and urban based gay teacher organizations. Of the 1,350 surveys…

Studies the profiling of first year students studying the Quantitative Methods for Business module at a British university, and makes policy recommendations to improve student performance. Indicates that the highest proportion of students are United Kingdom students, 58% of the students are male, and only 30% of the students are mature students.…

For the Yucca Mountain Viability Assessment (VA), a reference design was tentatively selected` In September 1997, and a series of model abstractions are being prepared for the performance assessment (PA) of that design. To determine the sensitivity of peak dose rate at the accessible environment to engineered components, several design options were subjected to the PA models available late in FY97.

For the Yucca Mountain Viability Assessment (VA), a reference design was tentatively selected in September 1997, and a series of model abstractions are being prepared for the performance assessment (PA) of that design. To determine the sensitivity of peak dose rate at the accessible environment to engineered components, several design options were subjected to the PA models available late in FY97.

Objective To study and analyze the possible benefits on performance of community health workers using point-of-care clinical guidelines implemented as interactive rich media job aids on small-format mobile platforms. Design A crossover study with one intervention (rich media job aids) and one control (traditional job aids), two periods, with 50 community health workers, each subject solving a total 15 standardized cases per period per period (30 cases in total per subject). Measurements Error rate per case and task, protocol compliance. Results A total of 1394 cases were evaluated. Intervention reduces errors by an average of 33.15% (p=0.001) and increases protocol compliance 30.18% (p<0.001). Limitations Medical cases were presented on human patient simulators in a laboratory setting, not on real patients. Conclusion These results indicate encouraging prospects for mHealth technologies in general, and the use of rich media clinical guidelines on cell phones in particular, for the improvement of community health worker performance in developing countries. PMID:21292702

... Student Support § 670.620 Are Job Corps students eligible to receive cash allowances and performance... students with post-separation allowances. (b) In the event of a student's death, any amount due under...

Background Financial incentives are widely used in performance-based financing (PBF) schemes, but their contribution to health workers’ incomes and job motivation is poorly understood. Cambodia undertook health sector reform from the middle of 2009 and PBF was employed as a part of the reform process. Objective This study examines job motivation for primary health workers (PHWs) under PBF reform in Cambodia and assesses the relationship between job motivation and income. Design A cross-sectional self-administered survey was conducted on 266 PHWs, from 54 health centers in the 15 districts involved in the reform. The health workers were asked to report all sources of income from public sector jobs and provide answers to 20 items related to job motivation. Factor analysis was conducted to identify the latent variables of job motivation. Factors associated with motivation were identified through multivariable regression. Results PHWs reported multiple sources of income and an average total income of US$190 per month. Financial incentives under the PBF scheme account for 42% of the average total income. PHWs had an index motivation score of 4.9 (on a scale from one to six), suggesting they had generally high job motivation that was related to a sense of community service, respect, and job benefits. Regression analysis indicated that income and the perception of a fair distribution of incentives were both statistically significant in association with higher job motivation scores. Conclusions Financial incentives used in the reform formed a significant part of health workers’ income and influenced their job motivation. Improving job motivation requires fixing payment mechanisms and increasing the size of incentives. PBF is more likely to succeed when income, training needs, and the desire for a sense of community service are addressed and institutionalized within the health system. PMID:27319575

This study examined the perceptions of medical sales representatives of job related duties, job qualifications needed, and motivating factors and tested for differences based on gender, age, years of experience and education using prior research as a base. This study also explored issues that may arise between sales people and physicians. The authors surveyed 132 medical sales representatives from pharmaceutical firms located in Ankara, Turkey. The authors' findings highlight the need in Turkey for developing in-service training programs for medical sales representatives, especially in the areas related to technical aspects of the product, effective marketing and personal selling strategies, and consumer relations. Training in these areas will help salespeople to better manage the problems typically encountered in physician-sales representative relations. While the study was conducted in Turkey, the results are similar to findings in prior research conducted in other countries and therefore may be of interest to all sales managers. PMID:15914372

This study examines how good strategies and praxis interplay with positive affect and self-efficacy to determine a teacher's job satisfaction, in the hypothesis that teaching effectively does not in itself guarantee satisfaction: positive affect and self-efficacy beliefs are needed. Self-assessment scales, designed to assess the use of efficient…

BACKGROUND: Nurses often complain about overwork and underpay. It seems that the association between “quality of working life” (QWL) and the degree of nurses’ involvement in their carrier is the critical factor in achieving a higher level of quality of care. This study aimed to assess the quality of working life and its association with “job performance” of the nurses in educational hospitals affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2007. METHODS: This was a descriptive-correlation study. Target population included all the nurses who were employed in hospitals affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Sample size was 120 of the mentioned nurses. Sampling method was stratified random and data collection tool was a questionnaire. Data analysis was done using mean, frequency distribution and spearman test. RESULTS: Finding of the study showed that the most common kind of quality of working life in the nurses (56.7%) was moderate one. The most frequent nurses’ task performance (79.2%) was also related to the moderate performance. There was a direct and significant relationship between jobperformance and quality of working life in all the aspects. CONCLUSIONS: According to the research findings, it is important to consider the workplace and quality of working life of the nurses for improving productivity and performance of the nurses. Organization and nursing managers should use programs that can improve quality of working life of the nurses. PMID:22049285

The authors investigated the negative consequences of emotional exhaustion for individual employees and their employers. On the basis of social exchange theory, the authors proposed that emotional exhaustion would predict jobperformance, 2 classes of organizational citizenship behavior, and turnover intentions. In addition, the authors posited that the relationship between emotional exhaustion and effective work behaviors would be mediated by organizational commitment. With only a few exceptions, the results of 2 field studies supported the authors' expectations. In addition, emotional exhaustion exerted an independent effect on these criterion variables beyond the impact of age, gender, and ethnicity. PMID:12675403

The current study assesses the effects of the commuting environment on affective states and hiring decisions. A total of 136 undergraduate females were randomly assigned to one of four conditions based on the length (10 km vs. 30 km) and level of congestion (low vs. high) during a commute. Multivariate analyses of variance indicate that affective…

Changes in a multitude of factors including the economy, student enrollment, university goals and policies, and the available talent pool have created an imbalance in the supply and demand for qualified part-time faculty. The unmet demand has prompted university leaders to seek an understanding of part-time faculty affective commitment, job…

Introduction Sensitivity analyses refer to investigations of the degree to which the results of a meta-analysis remain stable when conditions of the data or the analysis change. To the extent that results remain stable, one can refer to them as robust. Sensitivity analyses are rarely conducted in the organizational science literature. Despite conscientiousness being a valued predictor in employment selection, sensitivity analyses have not been conducted with respect to meta-analytic estimates of the correlation (i.e., validity) between conscientiousness and jobperformance. Methods To address this deficiency, we reanalyzed the largest collection of conscientiousness validity data in the personnel selection literature and conducted a variety of sensitivity analyses. Results Publication bias analyses demonstrated that the validity of conscientiousness is moderately overestimated (by around 30%; a correlation difference of about .06). The misestimation of the validity appears to be due primarily to suppression of small effects sizes in the journal literature. These inflated validity estimates result in an overestimate of the dollar utility of personnel selection by millions of dollars and should be of considerable concern for organizations. Conclusion The fields of management and applied psychology seldom conduct sensitivity analyses. Through the use of sensitivity analyses, this paper documents that the existing literature overestimates the validity of conscientiousness in the prediction of jobperformance. Our data show that effect sizes from journal articles are largely responsible for this overestimation. PMID:26517553

Employee engagement has been identified as being important to employee productivity and performance. Measures of employee engagement and job satisfaction in the context of information technology (IT) were developed to explore how employee engagement affects perceived job satisfaction. In a sample of IT professionals (N = 159), controlling for age, sex, job tenure, and marital status, employee engagement had a significant and positive correlation with job satisfaction. PMID:20099537

Individual affect-related performance zones (IAPZs) method utilizing Kamata et al. (J Sport Exerc Psychol 24:189-208, 2002) probabilistic model of determining the individual zone of optimal functioning was utilized as idiosyncratic affective patterns during golf performance. To do so, three male golfers of a varsity golf team were observed during three rounds of golf competition. The investigation implemented a multi-modal assessment approach in which the probabilistic relationship between affective states and both, performance process and performance outcome, measures were determined. More specifically, introspective (i.e., verbal reports) and objective (heart rate and respiration rate) measures of arousal were incorporated to examine the relationships between arousal states and both, process components (i.e., routine consistency, timing), and outcome scores related to golf performance. Results revealed distinguishable and idiosyncratic IAPZs associated with physiological and introspective measures for each golfer. The associations between the IAPZs and decision-making or swing/stroke execution were strong and unique for each golfer. Results are elaborated using cognitive and affect-related concepts, and applications for practitioners are provided. PMID:22562463

The authors provide a brief review of the history and assessment of math anxiety, its relationship to personal and educational consequences, and its important impact on measures of performance. Overall, math anxiety causes an "affective drop," a decline in performance when math is performed under timed, high-stakes conditions, both in laboratory…

This study examined the descriptive and predictive characteristics of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) in a sample of 85 law enforcement officer candidates. Descriptive results indicate that mean PAI full-scale and subscale scores are consistently lower than normative community sample scores, with some exceptions noted typically associated with defensive responding. Predictive validity was examined by relating PAI full-scale and subscale scores to supervisor ratings in the areas of jobperformance, integrity problems, and abuse of disability status. Modest correlations were observed for all domains; however, predictive validity was moderated by defensive response style, with greater predictive validity observed among less defensive responders. These results suggest that the PAI's full scales and subscales are able to predict law enforcement officers' performance, but their utility is appreciably improved when taken in the context of indicators of defensive responding. PMID:22224672

Emotional intelligence skills help nurses to cope with the emotional demands of healthcare environment. The aim of this study was to identify the relationship between emotional intelligence and perception of jobperformance among nurses. Using a correlational descriptive design with stratified random sampling, 338 registered nurses from teaching hospitals in North West of Iran were surveyed. Emotional intelligence and perception of jobperformance were measured using validated self-report measures. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential methods using SPSS/13. The mean of nurses' emotional intelligence and their perception of jobperformance was, respectively, 235.83 ± 37.98 and 157.63 ± 33.23. There was no significant relationship between nurses' emotional intelligence and their perception of jobperformance. Although there was a significant relationship between intrapersonal subscale of emotional intelligence and jobperformance, there was none with other subscales. In order to get rid of the physical and psychological effects of stressful work in wards, it seems that nurses just do routine activities and refuse working closely with the patients. It seems that fitting the patient to nurse ratio, dividing work between nurses, and supporting each other are necessary. PMID:27433375

Emotional intelligence skills help nurses to cope with the emotional demands of healthcare environment. The aim of this study was to identify the relationship between emotional intelligence and perception of jobperformance among nurses. Using a correlational descriptive design with stratified random sampling, 338 registered nurses from teaching hospitals in North West of Iran were surveyed. Emotional intelligence and perception of jobperformance were measured using validated self-report measures. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential methods using SPSS/13. The mean of nurses' emotional intelligence and their perception of jobperformance was, respectively, 235.83 ± 37.98 and 157.63 ± 33.23. There was no significant relationship between nurses' emotional intelligence and their perception of jobperformance. Although there was a significant relationship between intrapersonal subscale of emotional intelligence and jobperformance, there was none with other subscales. In order to get rid of the physical and psychological effects of stressful work in wards, it seems that nurses just do routine activities and refuse working closely with the patients. It seems that fitting the patient to nurse ratio, dividing work between nurses, and supporting each other are necessary. PMID:27433375

Though individual assessments are widely used in selection settings, very little research exists to support their criterion-related validity. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted of 39 individual assessment validation studies. For the current research, individual assessments were defined as any employee selection procedure that involved (a) multiple assessment methods, (b) administered to an individual examinee, and (c) relying on assessor judgment to integrate the information into an overall evaluation of the candidate's suitability for a job. Assessor recommendations were found to be useful predictors of jobperformance, although the level of validity varied considerably across studies. Validity tended to be higher for managerial than nonmanagerial occupations and for assessments that included a cognitive ability test. Validity was not moderated by the degree of standardization of the assessment content or by use of multiple assessors for each candidate. However, higher validities were found when the same assessor was used across all candidates than when different assessors evaluated different candidates. These results should be interpreted with caution, given a small number of studies for many of the moderator subgroups as well as considerable evidence of publication bias. These limitations of the available research base highlight the need for additional empirical work to inform individual assessment practices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved). PMID:24865578

The current study examined the associations among trait dimensions of perfectionism, test performance, and levels of positive and negative affect after taking a test. A sample of 92 female university students completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale one week prior to an actual class test. Measures of positive affect and negative affect…

Recent empirical reviews have claimed a surprisingly strong relationship between jobperformance and self-reported emotional intelligence (also commonly called trait EI or mixed EI), suggesting self-reported/mixed EI is one of the best known predictors of jobperformance (e.g., ρ = .47; Joseph & Newman, 2010b). Results further suggest mixed EI can robustly predict jobperformance beyond cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits (Joseph & Newman, 2010b; O'Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2011). These criterion-related validity results are problematic, given the paucity of evidence and the questionable construct validity of mixed EI measures themselves. In the current research, we update and reevaluate existing evidence for mixed EI, in light of prior work regarding the content of mixed EI measures. Results of the current meta-analysis demonstrate that (a) the content of mixed EI measures strongly overlaps with a set of well-known psychological constructs (i.e., ability EI, self-efficacy, and self-rated performance, in addition to Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and general mental ability; multiple R = .79), (b) an updated estimate of the meta-analytic correlation between mixed EI and supervisor-rated jobperformance is ρ = .29, and (c) the mixed EI-jobperformance relationship becomes nil (β = -.02) after controlling for the set of covariates listed above. Findings help to establish the construct validity of mixed EI measures and further support an intuitive theoretical explanation for the uncommonly high association between mixed EI and jobperformance--mixed EI instruments assess a combination of ability EI and self-perceptions, in addition to personality and cognitive ability. PMID:25243996

The Undergraduate Education Assessment (assessment) was launched to upgrade faculty's performance, but it also tends to intensify their job stress. Considering the little empirical research on the influence of stress on performance in the assessment and the confounded findings in literature, the study collected data with a survey and interviews to…

Whether different amounts of general job stress and stress related to the Alabama Performance-Based Accreditation Standards were experienced by teachers and principals was studied in a sample of 65 principals and 242 teachers from 9 Alabama school systems. All subjects completed the Alabama Performance-Based Accreditation Standards Stress Measure,…

Background: The present paper has examined the sources of stress among the healthcare professionals and the difference between responses of personality type A and type B healthcare professionals toward stressful situations. Further, the difference in the performance of both the personality types has been studied. The relationship between stress and performance among the healthcare professionals in general and with respect to personality type A and type B healthcare professionals in particular has also been investigated. Methods: A total of 160 healthcare professionals of Post Graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh, were subjects of this study. Results: Identification with patients, deterioration and complication in the patient condition, and job criticism emerged to be the sources of stress. Significant difference between personality type A and personality type B professionals’ response pertaining to identification with the patients only has been reported. However, type A individuals showed slightly higher inclination as compared to type B individuals on majority of stressful situations. It was further noted that type A individuals had scored higher on almost all the performance indicators as compared to personality type B individuals. The mean difference between the personality types was found to be significant for two performance dimensions, i.e., relationship with colleagues, and teaching and training. Conclusions: The stressful situation relationship with patients was found to have significantly negative impact on the performance factors such as good clinical care and rapport with patients. Daily work was also found to be negatively related to good medical practice. PMID:24479017

Academic performance of students in Nigerian institutions has been of much concern to all and sundry hence the need to assess the factors affectingperformance of undergraduate students in construction related discipline in Nigeria. A survey design was employed with questionnaires administered on students in the department of Quantity Surveying,…

To test the extent to which learners performing a simple keyboard passage would be affected by directing their focus of attention to different aspects of their movements, 16 music majors performed a brief keyboard passage under each of four focus conditions arranged in a counterbalanced design--a total of 64 experimental sessions. As they…

Training supervisors to increase their family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) has demonstrated significant benefits for employee physical health, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions among employees with high levels of family-to-work conflict in prior research in a grocery store context. We replicate and extend these results in a health care setting with additional important employee outcomes (i.e., employee engagement, organizational commitment, and supervisor ratings of jobperformance), and consider the role of the 4 dimensions underlying the FSSB. Using a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design, 143 health care employees completed surveys at 2 time periods approximately 10 months apart, along with their supervisors who provided ratings of employees' jobperformance. Between these surveys, we offered their supervisors FSSB training; 86 (71%) of these supervisors participated. Results demonstrated significant and beneficial indirect effects of FSSB training on changes in employee jobperformance, organizational commitment, engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions through changes in employee perceptions of their supervisor's overall FSSBs. Further analyses suggest that these indirect effects are due primarily to changes in the creative work-family management dimension of FSSB. (PsycINFO Database Record PMID:26652264

Research on task significance and relational job design suggests that information from beneficiaries of one’s work fosters perceptions of impact, and thus improved work outcomes. This paper presents results from a longitudinal field experiment examining the effect of another strategy for fostering perceptions of impact – engaging employees in regular reflection about how their work benefits others. With a sample of professionals from multiple organizations, this longitudinal study examined the effect on jobperformance and work-life conflict of both positive and negative impact reflection. Results show that negative impact reflection had a pronounced negative effect on jobperformance, but no effect on work-life conflict. Positive impact reflection had a weak positive effect on work-life conflict, but no significant effect on jobperformance. The direction of effects seen in the no intervention condition mirrored that of the negative impact reflection condition, suggesting a possible buffering effect for positive impact reflection. This research provides empirical and theoretical contributions to the literatures on relational job design and task significance. PMID:25505890

The trust literature distinguishes trustworthiness (the ability, benevolence, and integrity of a trustee) and trust propensity (a dispositional willingness to rely on others) from trust (the intention to accept vulnerability to a trustee based on positive expectations of his or her actions). Although this distinction has clarified some confusion in the literature, it remains unclear (a) which trust antecedents have the strongest relationships with trust and (b) whether trust fully mediates the effects of trustworthiness and trust propensity on behavioral outcomes. Our meta-analysis of 132 independent samples summarized the relationships between the trust variables and both risk taking and jobperformance (task performance, citizenship behavior, counterproductive behavior). Meta-analytic structural equation modeling supported a partial mediation model wherein trustworthiness and trust propensity explained incremental variance in the behavioral outcomes when trust was controlled. Further analyses revealed that the trustworthiness dimensions also predicted affective commitment, which had unique relationships with the outcomes when controlling for trust. These results generalized across different types of trust measures (i.e., positive expectations measures, willingness-to-be-vulnerable measures, and direct measures) and different trust referents (i.e., leaders, coworkers). PMID:17638454

The present meta-analytic study introduces an overall model of the relationships between job embeddedness and turnover outcomes. Drawing on 65 independent samples (N = 42,907), we found that on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness negatively related to turnover intentions and actual turnover, after controlling for job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job alternatives. In addition, the negative relationships between on-the-job embeddedness (off-the-job embeddedness) and turnover criteria were stronger in female-dominated samples and public organizations (collectivistic countries). Finally, turnover intentions, job search behavior, and jobperformance fully (partially) mediated the effect of on-the-job embeddedness (off-the-job embeddedness) on actual turnover. The research and practical implications of our findings are noted, in light of study limitations and future research needs. PMID:22663557

Nurses' empathy for and connection with patients demonstrates core professional values which are essential but, consequently, attract certain factors capable of inducing stress. Studies of the roles and responsibilities associated with nursing have implicated multiple and conflicting demands which might not be without some resultant effects. However, little research has been conducted on these work characteristics in developing economies to determine how these might impact the nurse employees' performance. There is need for evidence-based empirical findings to facilitate improvement in healthcare services. This study examined stress and level of burnout among Nigerian nurses (n = 2245) who were selected using stratified random sampling. The participants were measured using an ‘abridged measures booklet’ adopted from the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), Job Autonomy Questionnaire (JAQ), Questionnaire on Organisational Stress-Doetinchem (VOS-D) and Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS). The roles of work–home interference (WHI) and home–work interference (HWI), with respect to work characteristics and burnout (paying special attention to gender), were examined. Analyses using t-tests and linear regression showed no gender differences in burnout levels among Nigerian nurses, who experience medium to high levels of emotional exhaustion, medium levels of depersonalisation and high levels of personal accomplishment. WHI and HWI were found to mediate the relationship between work characteristics and burnout. The meditational relationship differs between genders. This study calls for further research into gender and burnout among the caring professions, especially in under-developed and developing economies of the world. PMID:22942900

This paper describes an approach to development of a solution algorithm of a general-purpose for large scale problems using “Local Clustering Organization (LCO)” as a new solution for Job-shop scheduling problem (JSP). Using a performance effective large scale scheduling in the study of usual LCO, a solving JSP keep stability induced better solution is examined. In this study for an improvement of a performance of a solution for JSP, processes to a optimization by LCO is examined, and a scheduling solution-structure is extended to a new solution-structure based on machine-division. A solving method introduced into effective local clustering for the solution-structure is proposed as an extended LCO. An extended LCO has an algorithm which improves scheduling evaluation efficiently by clustering of parallel search which extends over plural machines. A result verified by an application of extended LCO on various scale of problems proved to conduce to minimizing make-span and improving on the stable performance.

... Job Corps? 670.980 Section 670.980 Employees' Benefits EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION... provider; (2) The job placement rate of graduates into unsubsidized employment, analyzed by the vocational...) The average wage of graduates on the first day of employment and at 6 and 12 months...

This study was conducted to determine how sash movements affect the performance of fume hoods. The performance of two fume hoods was studied as the sashes were moved from closed to open position at speeds of 2 ft/s, 1.5 ft/s, and 1 ft/s. The tests were conducted with fume hoods operated at both constant volume and variable air volume. The tests indicate that sash movements can disturb airflow patterns at the face of the hood and potentially affect the performance of the hood. The effect of the sash movement varied with hood type and speed of sash movement. The faster sash movements of 2 ft/s and 1.5 ft/s had a greater effect on the performance of the hoods than the slower movement of 1 ft/s. Constant-volume hoods and variable-air-volume hoods were both affected by sash movements. Constant-volume hoods set to a full open face velocity of 60 ft/min were more susceptible to the sash movement than at 100 ft/min full open face velocity. The performance of variable-air-volume hoods is affected not only by sash movement speed but also by the response time of the controller. The drop in face velocity that occurs when the sash is moved is determined by the speed of the VAV controller. The required response time for containment depends on the fume hood design and the speed of the sash movement.

Many job redesign interventions are based on a multiple mediator-multiple outcome model in which the job redesign intervention indirectly influences a broad range of employee outcomes by changing multiple job characteristics. As this model remains untested, the aim of this study is to test a multiple mediator-multiple outcome model of job redesign. Multilevel analysis of data from a quasi-experimental job redesign intervention in a call center confirmed the hypothesized model and showed that the job redesign intervention affected a broad range of employee outcomes (i.e., employee well-being, psychological contract fulfillment, and supervisor-rated jobperformance) through changes in 2 job characteristics (i.e., job control and feedback). The results provide further evidence for the efficacy and mechanisms of job redesign interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record PMID:26641482

The purpose of this quantitative survey study was to test the Leontief input/output theory relating the input of IT certification to the output of the English-speaking U.S. human resource professional perceived IT professional jobperformance. Participants (N = 104) rated their perceptions of IT certified vs. non-IT certified professionals' job…

The study investigates the relationship between prior job experience and current academic performance among management students in India. It further explores the impact of individual and situational factors on the above relationship. Based on a longitudinal study spanning over nine months in the academic year 2010-11 among a sample of 324…

Student employment has been treated as a homogeneous category in studying the effects of doing part-time jobs on student academic performance or social life. In the present study, using data collected from a well-known public university in Macau, we treat student employment as a heterogeneous experience and compare the relative importance of…

Chinese society is accustomed to using feelings, reasons, and institutionalizations to determine how to deal with events, which raises a number of questions. How can the directors of early education institutions incorporate feelings, reasons, and institutionalizations into their management? How can they enhance the jobperformance of teachers?…

The study was set out to investigate stress coping strategies among Guidance Counsellors in the performance of their jobs. One research question and four hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Two instruments were used to collect data for the study. One hundred and ten copies of the instruments were administered on one hundred and ten…

Advancing the education of low-income adults could increase employment and income, but adult education programs have not successfully engaged low-income adults. Monetary reinforcement may be effective in promoting progress in adult education. This experiment evaluated the benefits of providing incentives for performance in a job-skills training…

These conference proceedings contain statements from those concerned with various aspects of research on jobperformance measures. Following introductory remarks, the formal presentations of work and ideas include "Air Training Command Interest in the Criterion Problem," by Donald E. Meyer, "The Criterion Problem: A Personnel Management…

This research brief presents selected findings from work examining the stability of value-added model estimates of teacher effectiveness and their implication for tenure policies. Findings show year-to-year correlations in teacher effects are modest, but pre-tenure estimates of teacher jobperformance do predict estimated post-tenure performance…

The research aimed to investigate the relationship between happiness, subjective well-being, creativity and jobperformance of primary school teachers in Ramhormoz City. Hence, a sample of 330 individuals was selected through random stratified sampling. The research tools included Oxford Happiness Inventory, Subjective Well-being Scale by Keyes…

Effective implementation and sustainability of quality laboratory programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa relies on the development of appropriate staff retention strategies. Assessing the factors responsible for job satisfaction and retention is key for tailoring specific interventions aiming at improving the overall impact of health programmes. A survey was developed to assess these factors among 224 laboratorians working in the laboratory programme the University of Maryland implemented in seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Lack of professional development was the major reason for leaving the previous job for 28% of interviewees who changed jobs in the past five years. Professional development/training opportunities was indicated by almost 90% (195/224) of total interviewees as the most important or a very important factor for satisfaction at their current job. Similarly, regular professional development/opportunities for training was the highest rated incentive to remain at their current job by 80% (179/224). Laboratory professionals employed in the private sector were more likely to change jobs than those working in the public sector (P = 0.002). The findings were used for developing specific strategies for human resources management, in particular targeting professional development, aiming at improving laboratory professionals within the University of Maryland laboratory programme and hence its long-term sustainability. PMID:23958152

This paper is part of an Air Force planning effort to develop a research, development, and applications program for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in three target areas: training, performance measurement, and jobperformance aiding. The paper is organized in five sections that (1) introduce the reader to AI and those subfields…

In this article, the authors develop the self-concern and other-orientation as moderators hypothesis. The authors argue that many theories on work behavior assume humans to be either self-interested or to be social in nature with strong other-orientation but that this assumption is empirically invalid and may lead to overly narrow models of work behavior. The authors instead propose that self-concern and other-orientation are independent. The authors also propose that jobperformance, prosocial behavior, and personal initiative are a function of (a) individual-level attributes, such as job characteristics when employees are high in self-concern, and (b) group-level attributes, such as justice climate when employees are high in other-orientation. Three studies involving 4 samples of employees from a variety of organizations support these propositions. Implications are discussed for theory on work behavior and interventions geared toward job enrichment and team-based working. PMID:19594234

Like many Americans caught up in the economic downturn, college students are worried about money. Now research indicates that financial worries may affect their academic performance. The author presents the results of this year's National Survey of Student Engagement. The survey reveals that more than a third of seniors and more than a quarter of…

Literature from organizational and social psychology has suggested that three types of factors influence performance, i.e., cognitive, affective and behavioral. A model was developed to test a set of propositions concerning the relationship between the three kinds of factors, and included attributions, expectancies, general emotional responses to…

This study investigated the perception of principals on how the factors of subject mastery, teaching methodology, personal characteristics, and attitude toward students affect the performance of teachers at higher secondary level in the Punjab. All principals of higher secondary level in the Punjab were part of the population of the study. From…

This study examines factors affecting students' performances in an Introductory Sociology course over five semesters. Employing simple and ordered logit regression models, the author explains final grades by focusing on individual demographic and educational characteristics that students bring into the classroom. The results show that a student's…

Incorporates measures of family environment (parent-child interaction) into research methodology to study the effects of sibsize (family size and birth order) on a child's cognitive performance and affective behavior. Provides tentative support for the confluence model of sibsize influences on children's behaviors. (RL)

This study compares affective piano performance with speech production from the perspective of dynamics: unlike previous research, this study uses finger force and articulatory effort as indexes reflecting the dynamics of affective piano performance and speech production respectively. Moreover, for the first time physical constraints such as piano fingerings and speech articulatory constraints are included due to their potential contribution to different patterns of dynamics. A piano performance experiment and speech production experiment were conducted in four emotions: anger, fear, happiness and sadness. The results show that in both piano performance and speech production, anger and happiness generally have high dynamics while sadness has the lowest dynamics. Fingerings interact with fear in the piano experiment and articulatory constraints interact with anger in the speech experiment, i.e., large physical constraints produce significantly higher dynamics than small physical constraints in piano performance under the condition of fear and in speech production under the condition of anger. Using production experiments, this study firstly supports previous perception studies on relations between affective music and speech. Moreover, this is the first study to show quantitative evidence for the importance of considering motor aspects such as dynamics in comparing music performance and speech production in which motor mechanisms play a crucial role. PMID:26217252

This study compares affective piano performance with speech production from the perspective of dynamics: unlike previous research, this study uses finger force and articulatory effort as indexes reflecting the dynamics of affective piano performance and speech production respectively. Moreover, for the first time physical constraints such as piano fingerings and speech articulatory constraints are included due to their potential contribution to different patterns of dynamics. A piano performance experiment and speech production experiment were conducted in four emotions: anger, fear, happiness and sadness. The results show that in both piano performance and speech production, anger and happiness generally have high dynamics while sadness has the lowest dynamics. Fingerings interact with fear in the piano experiment and articulatory constraints interact with anger in the speech experiment, i.e., large physical constraints produce significantly higher dynamics than small physical constraints in piano performance under the condition of fear and in speech production under the condition of anger. Using production experiments, this study firstly supports previous perception studies on relations between affective music and speech. Moreover, this is the first study to show quantitative evidence for the importance of considering motor aspects such as dynamics in comparing music performance and speech production in which motor mechanisms play a crucial role. PMID:26217252

Examined whether 6- and 11-year-olds' beliefs about job status and job interests are affected by gendered nature of jobs. Found that children gave higher status ratings to masculine jobs and expressed greater interest in jobs culturally associated with their own sex. Older children rated novel jobs portrayed with males as having higher status than…

Although vocational interests have a long history in vocational psychology, they have received extremely limited attention within the recent personnel selection literature. We reconsider some widely held beliefs concerning the (low) validity of interests for predicting criteria important to selection researchers, and we review theory and empirical evidence that challenge such beliefs. We then describe the development and validation of an interests-based selection measure. Results of a large validation study (N = 418) reveal that interests predicted a diverse set of criteria—including measures of job knowledge, jobperformance, and continuance intentions—with corrected, cross-validated Rs that ranged from .25 to .46 across the criteria (mean R = .31). Interests also provided incremental validity beyond measures of general cognitive aptitude and facets of the Big Five personality dimensions in relation to each criterion. Furthermore, with a couple exceptions, the interest scales were associated with small to medium subgroup differences, which in most cases favored women and racial minorities. Taken as a whole, these results appear to call into question the prevailing thought that vocational interests have limited usefulness for selection. PMID:20919794

The aim of this research was to investigate the influence of a social-evaluative context on simple cognitive tasks. While another person present in the room evaluated photographs of beautiful women or landscapes by beauty/attractiveness, female participants had to perform a combination of digit-categorization and spatial-compatibility task. There, before every trial, one of the women or landscape pictures was presented. Results showed selective performance impairments: the numerical distance effects increased on trials that followed women pictures but only, if another person concurrently evaluated these women pictures. In a second experiment, using the affective priming paradigm, the authors show that female pictures have a more negative connotation when they are concurrently evaluated by another person (social-evaluative context) than when they are not evaluated (neutral context). Together, these results suggest that the social-evaluative context triggers mild negative affective reactions to women pictures which then impair performance in an unrelated task. PMID:23423348

A study examined the relationship of aptitudes to the performance of skilled technical jobs in engine manufacturing. During the study, several approaches were utilized, including criterion-referenced validation, taxonomic validation, construct validation, and detailed anlaysis of the behaviors involved in performing the jobs. The study sample…

We developed a two-study, cross-national, constructive replication to examine the role of organizational politics perceptions as a contextual moderator of the political skill-jobperformance relationship. Specifically, we hypothesized that high levels of political skill would demonstrate its strongest positive effects on jobperformance when…

The importance of employment in society is unmistakable, but for many people sustained employment remains elusive. The unemployment rate for individuals with disabilities is staggering, and the consequences of being unemployed affects those individuals, their families, and society. The effects of performance feedback delivered via covert audio…

Job attitudes research is arguably the most venerable and popular topic in organizational psychology. This article surveys the field as it has been constituted in the past several years. Definitional issues are addressed first, in an attempt to clarify the nature, scope, and structure of job attitudes. The distinction between cognitive and affective bases of job attitudes has been an issue of debate, and recent research using within-persons designs has done much to inform this discussion. Recent research has also begun to reformulate the question of dispositional or situational influences on employee attitudes by addressing how these factors might work together to influence attitudes. Finally, there has also been a continual growth in research investigating how employee attitudes are related to a variety of behaviors at both the individual and aggregated level of analysis. PMID:22129457

This research focuses on investigating whether organisational identification mediates the effects of job security on in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour and how these mediation mechanisms differ according to gender. Through analysing 212 supervisor-subordinate dyads from a Chinese air transportation group, the research indicated that organisational identification partially mediated the effect of job security on in-role behaviour and fully mediated the effect of job security on extra-role behaviour. A multi-group analysis also showed that there were significant differences between male and female employees in these relationships. In addition, moderated mediation analyses showed that gender moderated the indirect effects of job security on in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour through organisational identification. Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed. PMID:25640308

This study investigates for the first time whether experienced former and current professional Irish dancers (PIDs) would recommend a career in Irish dance, and their perceived positive and negative attitudes toward this occupation. One hundred and sixty-five (71 current, 94 retired) PIDs participated in an online survey. Additional focus group interviews of six current and three retired PIDs were conducted to validate survey findings. PID comments were examined independently by the two investigators using thematic analysis and then cross-indexed and coded into the most common positive and negative themes. Ninety-four percent of surveyed PIDs and 100% of focus group participants stated that they would recommend a career in professional Irish dance. The main positive attributes identified included the opportunity to travel and experience diverse cultures, the development of enduring friendships, the pursuit of a hobby as a financially lucrative career, evolving personal life skills, and the maintenance of good physical health and fitness. The main negative themes included the insecure and short-term nature of the career, physical consequences in terms of pain and injury, potentially damaging psychological consequences, and practical difficulties inherent in a touring lifestyle. The effects of dancer job satisfaction on health, wellbeing, and performance are discussed, and recommendations for company managers and dance captains are developed based on findings. PMID:24565329

Development of fuel cells is often based on small-scale laboratory studies. Due to limited time and budgets, a minimum number of cells are usually prepared and tested, thus, conclusions about improved performance are often drawn from studies of a few cells. Generally, statistics showing the significance of an effect are seldom reported. In this work a simple PEM fuel cell electrode optimization experiment is used as an example to illustrate the importance of statistical evaluation of factors affecting cell performance. The use of fractional factorial design of experiments to reduce the number of cells that have to be studied is also addressed.

This document furnishes a complete copy of the Test Subject's Instructions and the Test Administrator's Handbook for a battery of criterion referenced Job Task Performance Tests (JTPT) for electronic maintenance. General information is provided on soldering, Radar Set AN/APN-147(v), Radar Set Special Equipment, Radar Set Bench Test Set-Up, and…

A battery of criterion referenced job task performance tests (JIPT) for typical electronic maintenance activities were developed. The construction of a battery of such tests together with an appropriate scoring for reporting the results is detailed. The development of a Test Administrators Handbook also is described. This battery is considered to…

We tested the incremental impact of a job-related set of variables for explaining a utility judgment training effectiveness variable, that is, course completion skill preparedness, beyond background and course-related variables. Our respondents were two different emergency medical service samples, 415 basics and 742 paramedics, from the 2008 US…

Nurses are the largest group and an important part of the providers in the health care systems that who a key role in hospitals. Any defect and deficiency in their work can result in irreversible outcomes. This study aimed to determine the effect of supervisors' support and mediating factors on the jobperformance (JOBPER) of 400 nurses working in the teaching hospitals affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, using structural equation modeling. The results showed that the supervisor's support had a significant negative effect on work-family conflict (t = -2.57) and a positive effect on organizational commitment (t = 4.03); Work-family conflict had a significant positive effect on job stress (t = 11.24) and a negative effect on organizational commitment (t = -3.35) and JOBPER (t = -2.29). Family-work conflict had a positive effect on job stress (t = 4.48) and a negative effect on organizational commitment (t = -2.54). Finally, job stress had a negative effect (t = -3.30), and organizational commitment showed a positive effect (t = 5.96) on the studied nurses' JOBPER. According to the results, supervisor's support could influence JOBPER through reducing work-family conflict and increasing organizational commitment. Therefore, to improve the nurses' JOBPER in the hospitals, some strategies are recommended. PMID:26218002

Background Because of high demands at work, nurses are at high risk for occupational burnout and physical complaints. The presence of job resources (such as job autonomy or social support) and recovery opportunities could counteract the adverse effect of high job demands. However, it is still unclear how job resources and recovery opportunities can be translated into effective workplace interventions aiming to improve employee health, well-being, and performance-related outcomes. The aim of the current research project is developing and implementing interventions to optimize job resources and recovery opportunities, which may lead to improved health, well-being and performance of nurses. Methods/design The DIRECT-project (DIsc Risk Evaluating Controlled Trial) is a longitudinal, quasi-experimental field study. Nursing home staff of 4 intervention wards and 4 comparison wards will be involved. Based on the results of a base-line survey, interventions will be implemented to optimize job resources and recovery opportunities. After 12 and 24 month the effect of the interventions will be investigated with follow-up surveys. Additionally, a process evaluation will be conducted to map factors that either stimulated or hindered successful implementation as well as the effectiveness of the interventions. Discussion The DIRECT-project fulfils a strong need for intervention research in the field of work, stress, performance, and health. The results could reveal (1) how interventions can be tailored to optimize job resources and recovery opportunities, in order to counteract job demands, and (2) what the effects of these interventions will be on health, well-being, and performance of nursing staff. PMID:20509923

This study evaluated the effectiveness of computer-based video instruction (CBVI) to teach three young adults with moderate intellectual disabilities to perform complex, multiple step, job tasks in a generalized setting. A multiple probe design across three job tasks and replicated across three students was used to evaluate the effectiveness of…

The jump to university level exams can be challenging for some students, often resulting in poor marks, which may be detrimental to their confidence and ultimately affect their overall degree class. Previous studies have found that question structure can have a strong impact on the performance of students in college level exams (see Gibson et al., 2015, for a discussion of its impact on physics undergraduates). Here, we investigate the effect of question structure on the exam results of geology and geophysics undergraduate students. Specifically, we analyse the performance of students in questions that have a 'scaffolded' framework and compare them to their performance in open-ended questions and coursework. We also investigate if observed differences in exam performance are correlated with the educational background and gender of students, amongst other factors. It is important for all students to be able to access their degree courses, no matter what their backgrounds may be. Broadening participation in the geosciences relies on removing systematic barriers to achievement. Therefore we recommend that exams are either structured with scaffolding in questions at lower levels, or students are explicitly prepared for this transition. We also recommend that longitudinal studies of exam performance are conducted within individual departments, and this work outlines one approach to analysing performance data.

The authors investigated whether and how 1 element of a high-performance work system, namely high-quality jobs (composed of extensive training, variety, and autonomy), affects occupational injuries. On the basis of data from the Australian WIRS95 database (N = 16,466; Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business, 1997), high-quality jobs exerted a direct effect on injuries and an indirect effect through the mediating influence of job satisfaction. Conceptual, methodological, and practical issues are discussed. PMID:12731711

Background No previous studies have addressed the integrated relationships among system quality, service quality, job satisfaction, and system performance; this study attempts to bridge such a gap with evidence-based practice study. Methods The convenience sampling method was applied to the information system users of three hospitals in southern Taiwan. A total of 500 copies of questionnaires were distributed, and 283 returned copies were valid, suggesting a valid response rate of 56.6%. SPSS 17.0 and AMOS 17.0 (structural equation modeling) statistical software packages were used for data analysis and processing. Results The findings are as follows: System quality has a positive influence on service quality (γ11= 0.55), job satisfaction (γ21= 0.32), and system performance (γ31= 0.47). Service quality (β31= 0.38) and job satisfaction (β32= 0.46) will positively influence system performance. Conclusions It is thus recommended that the information office of hospitals and developers take enhancement of service quality and user satisfaction into consideration in addition to placing b on system quality and information quality when designing, developing, or purchasing an information system, in order to improve benefits and gain more achievements generated by hospital information systems. PMID:23171394

In this study we aimed to examine the contents of humor in the Japanese workplace and to understand the effects of humor on mental/physical health and self-evaluation of jobperformance. Japanese workers (N = 436) responded to questionnaires addressing workplace humor, feelings about workplace, workplace communication, mental/physical health, and perceived jobperformance. An exploratory factor analysis indicated that there are five types of workplace humor: norm-violating humor, experience-sharing humor workplace-enjoying humor, people-recalling humor, and outside-mocking humor. A covariance structural analysis showed that norm-violating humor and workplace-enjoying humor decreased mental and physical health by promoting both negative feelings in the workplace and self-disclosure about the negative side of work. Results also revealed that experience-sharing humor, people-recalling humor, and outside-mocking humor had a positive effect on the self-evaluation of jobperformance as well as mental and physical health, by promoting both positive feelings and mutual communication in the workplace. Results suggest that humor in the workplace has various influences on workers depending on the type of workplace humor. PMID:27180510

Using social exchange theory as a conceptual framework, we investigated the relationship between interactional justice and the outcomes organizational loyalty (affective commitment, turnover intentions), perceived jobperformance (self-rated performance, personal accomplishment), and mental impairment (cognitive irritation, emotional exhaustion) in an online survey of 218 employees working in the field of computer technology. Specifically, we predicted that interactional justice would heighten the quality of social exchange relationships and therefore expected perceived social support (POS) and bullying to mediate the proposed relationships. We tested our hypotheses applying a latent structural equation model. Our findings revealed that POS mediated the relationship between interactional justice and organizational loyalty, whereas bullying mediated the relationship between interactional justice and mental impairment. Practical implications are discussed concerning how to foster interactional justice and POS and how to weaken bullying behavior. PMID:25511205

The report is the second of two describing the results of a world-wide survey of the maintenance activities of UH-1 helicopter mechanics for the purpose of studying the relationships among job requirements, training, and manpower considerations for aviation maintenance. A summary of the results of the first report is included. The survey…

The Job Training Partnership Act's Out-of-School Youth program (OSY) was audited to determine whether participants' reported outcomes for positive terminations were accurate and fully documented and what impact program interventions had on participants' post-program earnings. Program services and outcomes were audited for 499 OSY participants at…

A quantitative approach was used to investigate the impact of a district-wide, job-embedded mathematics professional development program on elementary teachers' general and personal efficacy. This investigation was based on the principles of mathematics professional development, efficacy theory, and student achievement. It was designed to…

This study analyzed the attitude of resignation to inferior economic status from the standpoint of ethnic origin, social and financial background, and response to job retraining opportunities. Detachment from others, lack of commitment and ambition, aversion to work and planning, and restricted hopes and aspirations were determined to be major…

A survey was conducted of all Webster University (Missouri) Extended Campus site directors (N=37) addressing the duties they associated with support staff positions at their sites. The directors were asked to assign relative importance in the duty rankings they listed and to show the job titles used for the positions at their sites. The 16…

Analyzes transcripts of job interviews involving nine English-speaking applicants from Chinese backgrounds and two experienced interviewers from Anglo-American MNCs (Multinational Corporations) in Singapore in order to reveal subtle clashes in culture. Finds that applicants from a Chinese background may be disadvantaged when being interviewed for…

Experimentation was carried out to evaluate holograms for use in training and as job aids. Holograms were compared against line drawings and photographs as methods of presenting visual information needed to accomplish a number of tasks. The dependent variables were assembly speed and assembly errors with people unstressed, assembly speed and assembly errors with people stressed, the percentage of discovered errors in assemblies, the number of correct assemblies misidentified as erroneous, and information extraction. Holograms generally were as good as or better visual aids than either photographs or line drawings. The use of holograms tends to reduce errors rather than speed assembly time in the assembly tasks used in these experiments. They also enhance the discovery of errors when the subject is attempting to locate assembly errors in a construction. The results of this experimentation suggest that serious consideration should be given to the use of holography in the development of job aids and in training. Besides these advantages for job aids, other advantages we found are that when page formated information is stored in man-readable holograms they are still useable when scratched or damaged even when similarly damaged microfilm is unuseable. Holography can also be used to store man and machine readable data simultaneously. Such storage would provide simplified backup in the event of machine failure, and it would permit the development of compatible machine and manual systems for job aid applications.

This study tested the hypotheses that expectancy work motivation, individual attitudes toward work, and structural and environmental components are predictions of teacher job satisfaction and effectiveness. Samples were selected from junior high school and higher education faculties. Subjects responded to open-ended questionnaires, and results…

Small shifts in circadian timing occur frequently as a result of daylight saving time or later weekend sleep. These subtle shifts in circadian phase have been shown to influence subjective sleepiness, but it remains unclear if they can significantly affectperformance. In a retrospective analysis we examined performance on the Psychomotor Vigilance Test before bedtime and after wake time in 11 healthy adults on fixed sleep schedules based on their habitual sleep times. The dim light melatonin onset, a marker of circadian timing, was measured on two occasions. An average 1.1 hour shift away from a proposed optimal circadian phase angle (6 hours between melatonin onset and midpoint of sleep) significantly slowed mean, median and fastest 10% reaction times before bedtime and after wake time (p<0.05). These results add to previous reports that suggest that humans may be sensitive to commonly occurring small shifts in circadian timing. PMID:22695081

Background and Objective: Earlier exposure to laparoscopic techniques is thought to be beneficial for medical students. Reports have demonstrated that practice improves performance in laparoscopies. In this study, we intended to evaluate whether medical students' interest in surgery is affected by the amount of practice and the performance on a laparoscopic simulator. Methods: A laparoscopic simulation curriculum was introduced at Taipei Medical University, Wan-Fang Medical Center. Study participants included 36 sixth-year and 14 seventh-year students who were divided according to whether they had indicated an interest (group A) or not (group B) in surgery. The students had twice-a-week practice sessions for 2 weeks. They underwent baseline measurement (BM) before training and posttraining measurement (PTM). Self-guided practice on the simulator was allowed. The learning outcomes were assessed comparing the BM and PTM scores by using the interquartile range (IQR) test. We also tested the correlation between total score and number of self-guided practice sessions. Results: All study participants showed improvement. No differences were observed between BM and PTM scores and between 6th- and 7th-year medical students. Significant differences were found in PTM scores between groups A and B (P < .001). Analysis of variance with a post hoc test for different groups revealed that the PTMs were significantly higher for both the 6th- and 7th-year medical students in group A than for those in group B (P < .001). Total performance scores were improved with a higher number of self-guided practice sessions. Linear regression analysis demonstrated a significant correlation between the number of self-guided practice sessions and total performance score (P < .001). Conclusion: Those clerks and interns interested in surgery who had more sessions for self-guided practice, displayed more improvement than those not interested in surgery did. Improvement in performance correlated

Lithium-oxygen batteries have recently received attention due to their extremely high theoretical energy densities, which far exceed that of any other existing energy storage technology. The significantly larger theoretical energy density of the lithium-oxygen batteries is due to the use of a pure lithium metal anode and the fact that the cathode oxidant, oxygen, is stored externally since it can be readily obtained from the surrounding air. Before the lithium-oxygen batteries can be realized as high performance, commercially viable products, there are still many challenges to overcome, from designing their cathode structure, to optimizing their electrolyte compositions and elucidating the complex chemical reactions that occur during charge and discharge. The scientific obstacles that are related to the performance of the lithium-oxygen batteries open up an exciting opportunity for researchers from many different backgrounds to utilize their unique knowledge and skills to bridge the knowledge gaps that exist in current research projects. This article is a summary of the most significant limiting factors that affect the performance of the lithium-oxygen batteries from the perspective of the authors. The article indicates the relationships that form between various limiting factors and highlights the complex yet captivating nature of the research within this field.

Does information irrelevant to government performanceaffect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters’ retrospective assessments of candidates’ performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games, we demonstrate these effects by using the betting market's estimate of a team's probability of winning the game before it occurs to isolate the surprise component of game outcomes. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey that we conducted during the 2009 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, where we find that surprising wins and losses affect presidential approval. An experiment embedded within the survey also indicates that personal well-being may influence voting decisions on a subconscious level. We find that making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions. These findings underscore the subtle power of irrelevant events in shaping important real-world decisions and suggest ways in which decision making can be improved. PMID:20615955

Does information irrelevant to government performanceaffect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters' retrospective assessments of candidates' performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games, we demonstrate these effects by using the betting market's estimate of a team's probability of winning the game before it occurs to isolate the surprise component of game outcomes. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey that we conducted during the 2009 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, where we find that surprising wins and losses affect presidential approval. An experiment embedded within the survey also indicates that personal well-being may influence voting decisions on a subconscious level. We find that making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions. These findings underscore the subtle power of irrelevant events in shaping important real-world decisions and suggest ways in which decision making can be improved. PMID:20615955

Background Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in solid organ transplant recipients. In addition, low physical activity is a risk factor for cardiac and cerebrovascular complications. Objectives This study examined potential relationships between physical activity, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and an exercise test in liver-graft recipients. Patients and Methods A total of 107 participants (62 men/45 women) who had received a liver transplantation (LT) at least 6 months previously were evaluated. Physical activity was assessed using three different questionnaires, while HRQoL was assessed using the medical outcomes study short form (SF)-36 questionnaire, and health behaviors were evaluated using the health behavior inventory (HBI). The exercise test was performed in a standard manner. Results Seven participants (6.5%) had a positive exercise test, and these individuals were older than those who had a negative exercise test (P = 0.04). A significant association between a negative exercise test and a higher level of physical activity was shown by the Seven-day physical activity recall questionnaire. In addition, HRQoL was improved in various domains of the SF-36 in participants who had a negative exercise test. No correlations between physical activity, the exercise test and healthy behaviors, as assessed via the HBI were observed. Conclusions Exercise test performance was affected by lower quality of life and lower physical activity after LT. With the exception of hypertension, well known factors that affect the risk of coronary artery disease had no effect on the exercise test results. PMID:27226801

The serial pattern found for conjunction visual-search tasks has been attributed to covert attentional shifts, even though the possible contributions of target location have not been considered. To investigate the effect of target location on orientation x color conjunction searches, the target's duration and its position in the display were manipulated. The display was present either until observers responded (Experiment 1), for 104 msec (Experiment 2), or for 62 msec (Experiment 3). Target eccentricity critically affectedperformance: A pronounced eccentricity effect was very similar for all three experiments; as eccentricity increased, reaction times and errors increased gradually. Furthermore, the set-size effect became more pronounced as target eccentricity increased, and the extent of the eccentricity effect increased for larger set sizes. In addition, according to stepwise regressions, target eccentricity as well as its interaction with set size were good predictors of performance. We suggest that these findings could be explained by spatial-resolution and lateral-inhibition factors. The serial self-terminating hypothesis for orientation x color conjunction searches was evaluated and rejected. We compared the eccentricity effect as well as the extent of the orientation asymmetry in these three conjunction experiments with those found in feature experiments (Carrasco & Katz, 1992). The roles of eye movements, spatial resolution, and covert attention in the eccentricity effect, as well as their implications, are discussed. PMID:8539099

In this study, dual-task interference in obstacle-avoidance tasks during human walking was examined. Ten healthy young adults participated in the experiment. While they were walking on a treadmill, an obstacle suddenly fell on the treadmill in front of their left leg during either midswing, early stance, or late stance of the ipsilateral leg. Participants were instructed to avoid the obstacle, both as a single task and while they were concurrently performing a cognitive secondary task (dual task). Rates of failure, avoidance strategy, and a number of kinematic parameters were studied under both task conditions. When only a short response time was available, rates of failure on the avoidance task were larger during the dual task than during the single task. Smaller crossing swing velocities were found during the dual task as compared with those observed in the single task. The difference in crossing swing velocities was attributable to increased stiffness of the crossing swing limb. The results of the present study indicated that divided attention affects young and healthy individuals' obstacle-avoidance performance during walking. PMID:12724099

This article highlights variables that affect cochlear implant performance, emerging factors warranting consideration, and variables shown not to affectperformance. Research on the outcomes following cochlear implantation has identified a wide spectrum of variables known to affect pos0timplantation performance. These variables relate to the device itself as well as individual patient characteristics. Factors believed to affect spiral ganglion cell survival and function have been shown to influence postoperative performance. Binaural hearing affectsperformance. Social and educational factors also affect postoperative performance. Novel variables capable of affectingperformance continue to emerge with increased understanding of auditory pathway development and neural plasticity. PMID:22115688

Background: Organizational factors are considered to be the cornerstone in achieving psychological and professional security at work, which in turn are positively reflected in jobperformance both quantitatively and qualitatively. Aim of the Study: The study aimed to assess of selected organizational factors (workload, available recourses and…

Worker satisfaction improved significantly as a consequence of the provision of the assigned and participative standards with performance feedback in a repetitive industrial production task. The maximum improvement in worker satisfaction was found for the participative standard and feedback condition. Only this condition had a significant positive effect on worker job attitudes. Monetary incentive, when provided with an assigned or participative standard with feedback, added no incremental worker satisfaction or job attitudes gain. The participative standard with feedback condition emerges as the optimum strategy for improving worker satisfaction and job attitudes in a repetitive industrial production task. PMID:12745697

This paper addresses the types of particle representation (encoding) procedures in a population-based stochastic optimization technique in solving scheduling problems known in the job-shop manufacturing environment. It intends to evaluate and compare the performance of different particle representation procedures in Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) in the case of solving Job-shop Scheduling Problems (JSP). Particle representation procedures refer to the mapping between the particle position in PSO and the scheduling solution in JSP. It is an important step to be carried out so that each particle in PSO can represent a schedule in JSP. Three procedures such as Operation and Particle Position Sequence (OPPS), random keys representation and random-key encoding scheme are used in this study. These procedures have been tested on FT06 and FT10 benchmark problems available in the OR-Library, where the objective function is to minimize the makespan by the use of MATLAB software. Based on the experimental results, it is discovered that OPPS gives the best performance in solving both benchmark problems. The contribution of this paper is the fact that it demonstrates to the practitioners involved in complex scheduling problems that different particle representation procedures can have significant effects on the performance of PSO in solving JSP.

The effects of oligosaccharide supplementation on the growth performance, flock uniformity and GIT development of broiler chickens were investigated. Four diets, one negative control, one positive control supplemented with zinc-bacitracin, and two test diets supplemented with mannoligosaccharide (MOS) and fructooligosaccharide (FOS), were used for the experiment. Birds given MOS or FOS had improved body weight (BW) and feed efficiency (FCR), compared to those fed the negative control diet during the 35-d trial period. The effect on FCR became less apparent when the birds got older. FOS and MOS supplementation reduced the pancreas weight as a percentage of BW, with an effect similar to that of the antibiotic, at 35 d of age. Birds given MOS tended to have a heavier bursa (p = 0.164) and lower spleen/bursa weight ratio (p = 0.102) at 35 d of age. MOS and Zn-bacitracin showed a clear improvement on flock uniformity, compared to FOS. The mortality rate was not affected by FOS or MOS. PMID:25049713

This study addresses how job seekers' experiences of rude and discourteous treatment--incivility--can adversely affect self-regulatory processes underlying job searching. Using the social-cognitive model (Zimmerman, 2000), we integrate social-cognitive theory with the goal orientation literature to examine how job search self-efficacy mediates the relationship between incivility and job search behaviors and how individual differences in learning goal orientation and avoid-performance goal orientation moderate that process. We conducted 3 studies with diverse methods and samples. Study 1 employed a mixed-method design to understand the nature of incivility within the job search context and highlight the role of attributions in linking incivility to subsequent job search motivation and behavior. We tested our hypotheses in Study 2 and 3 employing time-lagged research designs with unemployed job seekers and new labor market entrants. Across both Study 2 and 3 we found evidence that the negative effect of incivility on job search self-efficacy and subsequent job search behaviors are stronger for individuals low, rather than high, in avoid-performance goal orientation. Theoretical implications of our findings and practical recommendations for how to address the influence of incivility on job seeking are discussed. PMID:26436441

The human eye suffers from higher order aberrations, in addition to conventional spherical and cylindrical refractive errors. Advanced optical techniques have been devised to correct them in order to achieve superior retinal image quality. However, vision is not completely defined by the optical quality of the eye, but also depends on how the image quality is processed by the neural system. In particular, how neural processing is affected by the past visual experience with optical blur has remained largely unexplored. The objective of this thesis was to investigate the interaction of optical and neural factors affecting vision. To achieve this goal, pathological keratoconic eyes were chosen as the ideal population to study since they are severely afflicted by degraded retinal image quality due to higher order aberrations and their neural system has been exposed to that habitually for a long period of time. Firstly, we have developed advanced customized ophthalmic lenses for correcting the higher order aberration of keratoconic eyes and demonstrated their feasibility in providing substantial visual benefit over conventional corrective methodologies. However, the achieved visual benefit was significantly smaller than that predicted optically. To better understand this, the second goal of the thesis was set to investigate if the neural system optimizes its underlying mechanisms in response to the long-term visual experience with large magnitudes of higher order aberrations. This study was facilitated by a large-stroke adaptive optics vision simulator, enabling us to access the neural factors in the visual system by manipulating the limit imposed by the optics of the eye. Using this instrument, we have performed a series of experiments to establish that habitual exposure to optical blur leads to an alteration in neural processing thereby alleviating the visual impact of degraded retinal image quality, referred to as neural compensation. However, it was also found that

Background Community health workers (CHWs) form a vital link between the community and the health department in several countries. In India, since 2005 this role is largely being played by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), who are village-level female workers. Though ASHAs primarily work for the health department, in a model being tested in Rajasthan they support two government departments. Focusing on the ASHA in this new role as a link worker between two departments, this paper examines factors associated with her work performance from a multi-stakeholder perspective. Design The study was done in 16 villages from two administrative blocks of Udaipur district in Rajasthan. The findings are based on 63 in-depth interviews with ASHAs, their co-workers and representatives from the two departments. The interviews were conducted using interview guides. An inductive approach with open coding was used for manual data analysis. Results This study shows that an ASHA's motivation and performance are affected by a variety of factors that emerge from the complex context in which she works. These include various personal (e.g. education), professional (e.g. training, job security), and organisational (e.g. infrastructure) factors along with others that emerge from external work environment. The participants suggested various ways to address these challenges. Conclusion In order to improve the performance of ASHAs, apart from taking corrective actions at the professional and organisational front on a priority basis, it is equally essential to promote cordial work relationships amongst ASHAs and other community-level workers from the two departments. This will also have a positive impact on community health. PMID:25319596

Job satisfaction and burnout in the nursing workforce are global concerns. Not only do job satisfaction and burnout affect the quality and safety of care, but job satisfaction is also a factor in nurses' decisions to stay or leave their jobs. Shift patterns may be an important aspect influencing wellbeing and satisfaction among nurses. Many hospitals worldwide are moving to 12-hour shifts in an effort to improve efficiency and cope with nursing shortages. But what is the effect of these work patterns on the wellbeing of nurses working on hospital wards? This article reports on the results of a study performed in 12 European countries exploring whether 12-hour shifts are associated with burnout, job satisfaction and intention to leave the job. PMID:27180462

Although core self-evaluations have been linked to higher jobperformance, research has shown variability in the strength of this relationship. We propose that high core self-evaluations are more likely to increase jobperformance for other-oriented employees, who tend to anticipate feelings of guilt and gratitude. We tested these hypotheses across 3 field studies using different operationalizations of both performance and other-orientation (prosocial motivation, agreeableness, and duty). In Study 1, prosocial motivation strengthened the association between core self-evaluations and the performance of professional university fundraisers. In Study 2, agreeableness strengthened the association between core self-evaluations and supervisor ratings of initiative among public service employees. In Study 3, duty strengthened the association between core self-evaluations and the objective productivity of call center employees, and this moderating relationship was mediated by feelings of anticipated guilt and gratitude. We discuss implications for theory and research on personality and jobperformance. PMID:20085409

... 20 Employees' Benefits 4 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false When is a Job Corps student considered to be... ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (CONTINUED) THE JOB CORPS UNDER TITLE I OF THE WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT Administrative and Management Provisions § 670.915 When is a Job Corps student considered to be in...

... 20 Employees' Benefits 4 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false When is a Job Corps student considered to be... ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (CONTINUED) THE JOB CORPS UNDER TITLE I OF THE WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT Administrative and Management Provisions § 670.915 When is a Job Corps student considered to be in...

Discussion of job satisfaction and the level of jobperformance focuses on the effect of automation on job satisfaction among reference librarians. The influence of stress is discussed, a job strain model is explained, and examples of how to design a job to reduce the stress caused by automation are given. (12 references) (LRW)

This study investigated the extent to which sex composition and average team academic achievement of student simulation teams affect team effectiveness. Seventy-four students in two sections of a marketing principles class were divided into 20 teams to test their decision-making skills. For 10 weeks, each team operated a simulated supermarket…

The unique challenges presented in good banking business are approached through the concept of job enrichment. Described in this article is one consulting firm's experience with one bank--how they transformed job satisfaction, motivation, and performance into useable tools benefiting the individual and the organization. (Author)

By sampling extreme cases (five high-performing schools and five low-performing ones), the researcher revealed the differences in the teachers' motivation (Mattar, 2010) as well as the extent to which Principals adopted the instructional leadership style (Mattar, 2012) in the two sets of schools. Here, she looked for additional issues, within the…

The documentation of the benefits of blog use in foreign language education has proliferated since 2006. In the field of blogging to write, most studies focus on learners' linguistic performance and perceptions. To provide an analysis of learners' writing performance by using blogs, in addition to the often-researched areas, this study examines…

Addresses the issue of whether preschoolers are aware of the connection between their emotions, their performance on a task of eye-hand coordination, and their evaluation of the task and their performance. Results indicate a developmental trend that children's predictions conform more to mood congruity theory as they grow older. (Author/DST)

National and state representative female gymnasts (n = 37), aged initially between 10 and 12 years, completed a mixed longitudinal study over 3.3 years, to investigate the effect of body size on gymnastic performance. Subjects were tested at four-monthly intervals on a battery of measures including structural growth, strength and gymnastic performance. The group were divided into 'high growers' and 'low growers' based on height (> 18 cm or < 14 cm/37 months, respectively) and body mass (> 15 kg or < 12 kg/37 months, respectively) for comparative purposes. Development of gymnastic performance was assessed through generic skills (front and back rotations, a twisting jump and a V-sit action) and a vertical jump for maximum height. The results show that the smaller gymnast, with a high strength to mass ratio, has greater potential for performing skills involving whole-body rotations. Larger gymnasts, while able to produce more power and greater angular momentum, could not match the performance of the smaller ones. The magnitude of growth experienced by the gymnast over this period has a varying effect on performance. While some activities were greatly influenced by rapid increases in whole-body moment of inertia (e.g. back rotation), performance on others like the front rotation and vertical jump, appeared partly immune to the physical and mechanical changes associated with growth. PMID:14737925

Environmental variation undoubtedly can have the most significant impact on livestock performance in forage based production systems. Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation influence herbage production and quality, maintenance requirements and intake. Producers of “forage system” products h...

The relationship of endometrial cavity length to intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) performance was evaluated in 319 patients wearing three types of devices. The rate of events, defined as pregnancy, expulsion, or medical removal, increased significantly when the length of the IUD was equal to, exceeded, or was shorter by two or more centimeters than the length of the endometrial cavity. Total uterine length was found to be a less accurate prognostic indicator of IUD performance than endometrial cavity length alone. PMID:998687

Attitude data were obtained from 556 employees in a western telephone company. Respondents held one of sixteen "craft" jobs in the department selected for study. Multiple discriminant function analysis was performed using sixteen groups formed on the basis of subjects' job titles. Variables used in this primary analysis included job satisfaction,…

Department of Labor, Washington, DC. Office of the American Workplace.

This guide identifies selected workplace practices that individual businesses have used to become high performance work organizations. The guide, which is intended for managers, directors, labor leaders, workers, investors, and other individuals interesting in adopting high performance work practices, lays out the basic steps involved in…

The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) introduced a performance appraisal system (PAS) designed to improve performance indicators across the board in Public Service including academic/faculty staff at the University of Zimbabwe as part of a nation wide strategy. The Public service is a body responsible for all civil workers including academic staff,…

The purpose of our study was to further elucidate how employees should behave at work to increase their chances of being mentored by their immediate supervisor. To that end, we experimentally tested how three domains of employee performance [task performance (TP), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) targeting the supervisor, and…

Sociologists have extensively documented the ways that parent resources predict children's achievement. However, less is known about whether and how children's academic performance shapes parental investment behaviors. I use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) and longitudinal fixed effects models to examine how changes in teacher assessments are related to changes in the conferral of various parent resources. Overall, I find that the relationship between achievement and investment varies based on the directionality in children's achievement and the type of resource at hand. Children whose performance improves receive a broad range of enrichment resources, while declines in performance are met with corrective educational resources. Results are largely consistent whether language or math assessments are used to predict investment, and also among children whose achievement does not change over time. I discuss these patterns, along with implications for the use of parent resources in education and family research. PMID:26004488

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) mainly affects people of working age. The Multiple Sclerosis Questionnaire for Job Difficulties (MSQ-Job) was designed to measure difficulties in work-related tasks. Our aim is to define cut-off score of MSQ-Job to identify potential critical situations that might require specific attention. A sample of patients with MS completed the MSQ-Job, WHODAS 2.0 and MSQOL-54 respectively for work difficulties, disability and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) evaluation. K-means Cluster Analysis was used to divide the sample in three groups on the basis of HRQoL and disability. ANOVA test was performed to compare the response pattern between these groups. The cut-off score was defined using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses for MSQ-Job total and count of MSQ-Job items scores ≥3: a score value corresponding to the maximum of the sensitivity-to-specificity ratio was chosen as the cut-off. Out of 180 patients enrolled, twenty were clustered in the higher severity group. The area under the ROC curve was 0.845 for the MSQ-Job total and 0.859 for the count of MSQ-Job items scores ≥3 while the cut-off score was 15.8 for MSQ-Job total and 8 for count of items scored ≥3. We recommend the use of MSQ-Job with this calculation as cut-off for identifying critical situations, e.g. in vocational rehabilitation services, where work-related difficulties have a significant impact in terms of lower quality of life and higher disability. PMID:26842465

A 10-year study of the relationship between measures of college education and work performance for police officers (n=84) showed a significant relationship with promotions and supervisory ratings. There was an inconsistent relationship with measures of disciplinary action. (JOW)

Few studies in medical education have studied effect of quality of motivation on performance. Self-Determination Theory based on quality of motivation differentiates between Autonomous Motivation (AM) that originates within an individual and Controlled Motivation (CM) that originates from external sources. To determine whether Relative Autonomous…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between District Performance Scores (DPS) in Louisiana and (a) socio-economic status of students, (b) academic achievement using average ACT scores, (c) percentage of certified teachers, (d) district class size, (e) per pupil expenditure, and (f) percentage of minority students in…

Research supports several factors related to student success. Darling-Hammond (2000) indicated that the quality of teachers, as measured by whether the teachers were fully certified and had a major in their teaching field, was related to student performance. Measures of teacher preparation and certification were the strongest predictors of student…

This research used prospective longitudinal data to examine the associations between first-grade teachers' over- and underestimation of their students' math abilities, basic reading abilities, and language skills and the students' high school academic performance, with special attention to the subject area and moderating effects of student…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between fourteen social process variables (relating to perinatal events, early language patterns, parental/home environment, and child behavior patterns) and the reading performance of retarded readers. The subjects were 180 children, aged seven through fifteen, randomly selected from among…

The study investigated and analyzed the state of academic web-based job announcements in Library and Information Science Field. The purpose of study was to get in depth understanding about main characteristics and trends of academic job market in Library and Information science field. The study focused on web-based version announcement as it was…

This study examines the association between secondary school administrators' emotional intelligence (EI) and teacher job satisfaction. Two separate questions guided the study. First, does the emotional intelligence of secondary school administrators relate to teacher job satisfaction and secondly, is there a relationship between EI of…

This publication is a product of the knowledge development effort implemented under the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act of 1977. It is the second volume of an assessment of the Job Corps, which found that, overall, the Job Corps experience of training young men and women for employment has been beneficial to society, although there…

To better meet the needs of AGU members, a program has been started to increase the effectiveness of the Job Center activity at the Spring and Fall Meetings. As a result, participation in the Job Center at the 1988 AGU Spring Meeting in Baltimore increased substantially compared to previous Spring Meetings. The number of employers, applicants, and interviews scheduled more than doubled compared to the 1987 Spring Job Center.In order to make the meeting Job Centers even better, a survey is being conducted of employers and applicants who participated in the 1988 Spring Job Center. Evaluation of this survey will be useful in continuing increased participation in and the effectiveness of the Job Center at the 1988 Fall Meeting. Past participants and those interested in the future of the Job Center are encouraged to forward comments and suggestions to AGU, Member Programs Division, 2000 Florida Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20009.

Butterfly wings are characterized by rows of scales (approximately 100 microns in length) that create a shingle-like pattern of cavities over the entire surface. It is hypothesized that these cavities influence the airflow around the wing and increase aerodynamic performance. A forewing of the Monarch butterfly (Danus plexippus) naturally undergoes autorotational flight in the laminar regime. Autorotational flight is an accurate representation of insect flight because the rotation induces a velocity gradient similar to that found over a flapping wing. Drop test flights of 22 forewings before and after scale removal were recorded with a high-speed camera and flight behavior was quantified. It was found that removing the scales increased the descent speed and decreased the descent factor, a measure of aerodynamic efficacy, suggesting that scales increased the performance of the forewings. Funded by NSF REU Grant 1062611.

Subjects judged the orientation of a 2 min. gap Landolt C located at a distance of 2.4 m. The stimuli were presented in central vision on a CRT, at low to medium contrast. The effects of varying the spectrum and luminance of surround lighting were assessed on both pupil size (measured using infrared pupillometry during task performance) and task accuracy. The task display was protected from the surround lighting, so that its luminance and contrast could be varied independently of the changes in the surround lighting. Indirect surround illumination was provided by either two illuminants of very different scotopic spectral content but with the same photopic luminance (Experiments 1 and 3), or by using the same illuminant at two different luminance levels (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the effect of changing surround spectrum was compared to the effect of varying task background luminance between 12 cd/m{sup 2} and 73 cd/m{sup 2}. In all experiments, scotopically enhanced surround lighting produced pupil areas which were reduced by almost 50% in comparison with surround lighting with relatively less scotopic luminance. Concomitantly there was improvement in Landolt C task performance with the scotopically enhanced surround lighting at all contrast and luminance levels. In these experiments, smaller pupil sizes were associated with significantly better visual-task performance in spite of lower task retinal illuminance when compared to the condition with larger pupils. These results suggest that changes in surround spectrum can compensate for the effect on task performance of a reduction in task luminance and supports the hypothesis that lighting energy savings could accrue in the workplace by shifting lamp spectra to obtain greater scotopic efficacy.

Subjects judged the orientation of a 2 min. gap Landolt C located at a distance of 2.4 m. The stimuli were presented in central vision on a CRT, at low to medium contrast. The effects of varying the spectrum and luminance of surround lighting were assessed on both pupil size (measured using infrared pupillometry during task performance) and task accuracy. The task display was protected from the surround lighting, so that its luminance and contrast could be varied independently of the changes in the surround lighting. Indirect surround illumination was provided by either two illuminants of very different scotopic spectral content but with the same photopic luminance (Experiments 1 and 3), or by using the same illuminant at two different luminance levels (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the effect of changing surround spectrum was compared to the effect of varying task background luminance between 12 cd/m[sup 2] and 73 cd/m[sup 2]. In all experiments, scotopically enhanced surround lighting produced pupil areas which were reduced by almost 50% in comparison with surround lighting with relatively less scotopic luminance. Concomitantly there was improvement in Landolt C task performance with the scotopically enhanced surround lighting at all contrast and luminance levels. In these experiments, smaller pupil sizes were associated with significantly better visual-task performance in spite of lower task retinal illuminance when compared to the condition with larger pupils. These results suggest that changes in surround spectrum can compensate for the effect on task performance of a reduction in task luminance and supports the hypothesis that lighting energy savings could accrue in the workplace by shifting lamp spectra to obtain greater scotopic efficacy.

Objective The objective of this study was to examine factors such as academic competence, test competence, time management, strategic studying, and test anxiety, and identify whether these factors could distinguish differences among students, based on academic performance and enrollment in the experiential program. Methods A cross-sectional study design utilizing questionnaires measuring previously validated constructs was used to evaluate the effect of these factors on students with low and high cumulative grade point averages (GPAs). Pharmacy students (N = 198) enrolled at the University of Houston participated in the study. Results Academic performance was significantly associated with factors such as academic competence and test competence. Students with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or greater significantly differed in their level of test competence than those with a GPA of less than 3.0. Students enrolled in their experiential year differed from students enrolled in their second year of curriculum on factors such as test anxiety, academic competence, test competence, and time management skills. Conclusion Test competence was an important factor to distinguish students with low vs. high academic performance. Factors such as academic competence, test competence, test anxiety and time management improve as students' progress in their experiential year. PMID:17149433

The present study examined the moderating effects of procedural and distributive justice on the relationships between political skill and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among 175 supervisor-subordinate dyads of a government organization. Using Mischel's (1968) situationist perspective, high justice conditions were considered "strong situations," whereas low justice conditions were construed as "weak situations." We found that when both procedural and distributive justice were low, political skill was positively related to performance. Under conditions of both high procedural and high distributive justice, political skill was negatively related to performance. Finally, under conditions of low distributive justice, political skill was positively related to OCB, whereas under conditions of high distributive justice, political skill had little effect on OCB. These results highlight the importance of possessing political skill in weak but not strong situations. PMID:19916653

New Worlds Observer is a mission concept designed to find, image, and take spectra of planets around other stars. It consists of a space telescope and a separate starshade that blocks the light from the star and passes the planet's light. One important aspect of designing this mission is finding consistent metrics to measure the system performance. This will allow us to choose the optimal architecture to provide the desired science return. In this poster, we will describe preliminary performance metrics and apply these metrics to identify the best mission to accomplish different science requirements.

Research on affect as a group-level phenomenon has shown that over time, individual members within a group become highly similar in their affect (i.e., members experience and display similar emotions and moods), and often become similar enough that the aggregation of individuals' affect can meaningfully represent the "affective tone" of the group. It is generally assumed that a more positive affective tone will lead to better team performance. We challenge the conclusion that positive affective tone is always good for team performance, suggesting that the relationship between positive affective tone and team performance is subject to moderating influences. Across two studies, we demonstrate that the self-reported collective emotional skills of team members play a crucial role in determining whether positive affective tone is beneficial or detrimental to team performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. PMID:26208085

The purpose of this project was to develop a methodology to establish standards of jobperformance and continuing education opportunities for maintaining competency of occupational therapists. The report contents include (1) Statement of the Problem (The Need for Re-Certification, Problems in the Design of the Re-Certification Program, and the…

This research aims to know and test the influence of leadership styles, work environment and job satisfaction of employees on performance. Research methods with the use of a quantitative approach, the population in this study as many as 45 people while the sample in this research is 45 people. In this study the researchers data analysis using SPSS…

Designed to identify exemplary strategies and procedures for assessing employer satisfaction with former vocational education students' training and jobperformance, this handbook provides ideas for initiating such an assessment and for improving upon current assessment practices. It consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the…

To assess satisfactory jobperformance of superintendents on the basis of school districts' high-stakes testing outcomes, existing teacher models were reviewed and critiqued as potential options for retrofit. For these models, specific problems were identified relative to the choice of referent groups. An alternate referent group (statewide…

The purpose of this research was to examine the mediating roles of job autonomy and the quality of the leader-member relationship to explain the impact of organizational support on team performance. A total of 228 cases collected from Korean business organizations were used for data analysis. Hierarchical multiple regression, Type 1 SS-based…

The aim of the present study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between jobperformance-based self-esteem (JPB-SE) and work-home interaction (WHI) in terms of the direction of the interaction (work-to-home vs. home-to-work) and the effect (conflict vs. facilitation). A sample of 3,475 respondents from eight different occupational groups (lawyers, physicians, nurses, teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working in advertising and information technology) supplied data at two points of time with a two-year time interval. The two-wave, cross-lagged structural equations modeling (SEM) analysis demonstrated reciprocal relationships between these variables, i.e., jobperformance-based self-esteem may act as a precursor as well as an outcome of work-home interaction. The strongest association was between jobperformance-based self-esteem and work-to-home conflict. Previous research on work-home interaction has mainly focused on situational factors. This longitudinal study expands the work-home literature by demonstrating how individual vulnerability (jobperformance-based self-esteem) contributes to the explanation of work-home interactions. PMID:20338010

The study was designed to determine the reliability and criterion validity of a psychomotor performance test (the Fine Finger Dexterity Work Task Unit) with 40 partially or totally blind adults. Reliability was established by using the test-retest method. A supervisory rating was developed and the reliability established by using the split-half…

In recent months a number of states, such as Tennessee, have considered tying teacher evaluations and tenure to student achievement as part of their Race to the Top plans. This research brief evaluates how well early-career performance signals teacher effectiveness after tenure. The brief presents selected findings from a larger study using North…

A sample of 145 people representing eighty farm operations and a statewide sample of 233 agricultural and agribusiness workers participated in a study to identify competencies, their importance (on a one to five rating scale), and the performance level required of a beginning farm operator in each of the following five cluster areas considered…

Reductions in student performance and increased non-instructional costs have been found to be direct results of high teacher turnover. In one district in the southern United States, the teacher turnover rate was almost 3 times the state average, prompting administrators to adjust local policies and procedures. The purpose of this project study was…

... wage levels. Further, the occasional or sporadic performance of an activity which may require extra... completes his part of it, and places it on a waiting pallet. In such a situation, a wage rate differential... required to spend part of his time carrying out heavy packages or replacing stock involving the lifting...

Selecting resident assistants is integral to the success of housing operations on college and university campuses. Recruiting high-performing student staff is a priority in achieving departmental goals. Despite the importance of this process and the amount of time and resources expended during selection, there is scarce research investigating the…

This paper connects research on the sociology of gender and work to that concerning the performance of gender in school to distill salient differences between the individualist and the interactionist perspectives. The interactionist perspective is shown to clarify processes by which gender-based inequality is rendered seemingly natural. The…

As the use of contracting for Information Technology (IT) services steadily increases, IT managers are challenged with reconciling the need for flexibility achieved through the use of contract workers, with the need to understand the factors that maximize the performance and behaviors of contract and permanent IT workers. While several research…

"Focus on opportunities" is a cognitive-motivational facet of occupational future time perspective that describes how many new goals, options, and possibilities individuals expect to have in their personal work-related futures. This study examined focus on opportunities as a mediator of the relationships between age and work performance and…

Since the 80's many studies have been conducted in order to explicate good and bad performances of commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs), but yet no defined correlation has been found out to be totally representative of plant operational experience. In early works, data availability and the number of operating power stations were both limited; therefore, results showed that specific technical characteristics of NPPs were supposed to be the main causal factors for successful plant operation. Although these aspects keep on assuming a significant role, later studies and observations showed that other factors concerning management and organization of the plant could instead be predominant comparing utilities operational and economic results. Utility quality, in a word, can be used to summarize all the managerial and operational aspects that seem to be effective in determining plant performance. In this paper operational data of a consistent sample of commercial nuclear power stations, out of the total 433 operating NPPs, are analyzed, mainly focusing on the last decade operational experience. The sample consists of PWR and BWR technology, operated by utilities located in different countries, including U.S. (Japan)) (France)) (Germany)) and Finland. Multivariate regression is performed using Unit Capability Factor (UCF) as the dependent variable; this factor reflects indeed the effectiveness of plant programs and practices in maximizing the available electrical generation and consequently provides an overall indication of how well plants are operated and maintained. Aspects that may not be real causal factors but which can have a consistent impact on the UCF, as technology design, supplier, size and age, are included in the analysis as independent variables. (authors)

Titanium dioxide is being evaluated as a photocatalyst in the destruction of contaminants in aqueous waste streams. Commercial samples of TiO{sub 2} powder have been obtained for base line studies of the photocatalytic destruction of salicylic acid standards. These commercial samples have been prepared by flame hydrolysis and aerosol or spray pyrolysis. Additional samples of TiO{sub 2} have been prepared in house by precipitation from TiCl{sub 4} in aqueous solution, some with the addition of dopants. X-ray powder diffraction data analysis indicates the predominate phase of these commercial and prepared powders to be anatase. A minor amount of the rutile crystalline phase of TiO{sub 2} was observed at various levels in some of these catalysts. The broadness of the x-ray diffraction bands varied among the samples analyzed and indicated the primary particle size to be within the 500 to 1,000 angstrom range with the product produced in house having the smallest crystallite size. Experiments were then performed to assess the photocatalytic performance of these various types of catalyst in the destruction of 30 ppm salicylic acid in deionized water.

The catalog describes jobsperformed in business and industry by persons with disabilities. Each job described is performed by a specific disabled individual. Job descriptions are indexed by disability and job title. Each job description specifies the type of job, the disability of the person performing the job, company information (e.g., company…

Large arrays of microphones have been proposed and studied as a possible means of acquiring data in offices, conference rooms, and auditoria without requiring close-talking microphones. When such an array essentially surrounds all possible sources, it is said to have a large aperture. Large-aperture arrays have attractive properties of spatial resolution and signal-to-noise enhancement. This paper presents a careful comparison of theoretical and measured performance for an array of 256 microphones using simple delay-and-sum beamforming. This is the largest currently functional, all digital-signal-processing array that we know of. The array is wall-mounted in the moderately adverse environment of a general-purpose laboratory (8 m x 8 m x 3 m). The room has a T60 reverberation time of 550 ms. Reverberation effects in this room severely impact the array's performance. However, the width of the main lobe remains comparable to that of a simplified prediction. Broadband spatial resolution shows a single central peak with 10 dB gain about 0.4 m in diameter at the -3 dB level. Away from that peak, the response is approximately flat over most of the room. Optimal weighting for signal-to-noise enhancement degrades the spatial resolution minimally. Experimentally, we verify that signal-to-noise gain is less than proportional to the square root of the number of microphones probably due to the partial correlation of the noise between channels, to variation of signal intensity with polar angle about the source, and to imperfect correlation of the signal over the array caused by reverberations. We show measurements of the relative importance of each effect in our environment. PMID:12051434

Large arrays of microphones have been proposed and studied as a possible means of acquiring data in offices, conference rooms, and auditoria without requiring close-talking microphones. When such an array essentially surrounds all possible sources, it is said to have a large aperture. Large-aperture arrays have attractive properties of spatial resolution and signal-to-noise enhancement. This paper presents a careful comparison of theoretical and measured performance for an array of 256 microphones using simple delay-and-sum beamforming. This is the largest currently functional, all digital-signal-processing array that we know of. The array is wall-mounted in the moderately adverse environment of a general-purpose laboratory (8 m×8 m×3 m). The room has a T60 reverberation time of 550 ms. Reverberation effects in this room severely impact the array's performance. However, the width of the main lobe remains comparable to that of a simplified prediction. Broadband spatial resolution shows a single central peak with 10 dB gain about 0.4 m in diameter at the -3 dB level. Away from that peak, the response is approximately flat over most of the room. Optimal weighting for signal-to-noise enhancement degrades the spatial resolution minimally. Experimentally, we verify that signal-to-noise gain is less than proportional to the square root of the number of microphones probably due to the partial correlation of the noise between channels, to variation of signal intensity with polar angle about the source, and to imperfect correlation of the signal over the array caused by reverberations. We show measurements of the relative importance of each effect in our environment.

We investigated the effect of background noise on performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Two groups of older adults (one with clinically normal hearing, one with hearing loss) and a younger adult group with clinically normal hearing were administered two versions of the MoCA under headphones in low and high levels of background noise. Intensity levels used to present the test were customized based on the hearing abilities of participants with hearing loss to yield a uniform level of difficulty across listeners in the high-level noise condition. Both older groups had poorer MoCA scores in noise than the younger group. Importantly, all participants had poorer MoCA scores in the high-noise (M = 22.7/30) compared to the low-noise condition (M = 25.7/30, p < .001). Results suggest that background noise in the test environment should be considered when cognitive tests are conducted and results interpreted, especially when testing older adults. PMID:27345572

The handbook covers a comprehensive series of Job-Task Performance Tests for the Doppler Radar (AN/APN) and its Associated Computer (AN/ASN-35). The test series has been developed to measure jobperformance of the electronic technician. These tests encompass all phases of day-to-day preventative and corrective maintenance that technicians are…

Plant competition occurs through the negative effects that individual plants have on resource availability to neighboring individuals. Therefore competition experiments need to examine how different species change resource availability to their neighbors, and how different species respond to these changes-allocationally, architecturally, and physiologically-through time. In a greenhouse study we used a model system of annuals to examine how canopies of species having differing morphologies differed in their architectures and light-interception abilities, and how different species performed when grown in these canopies. Abutilon theophrasti, Datura stramonium, and Polygonum pensylvanicum were grown as [open quotes]targets[close quotes]. Plants were grown in pots, with one target plant and four neighbor plants. Detailed measurements of neighbor canopy structure and target plant canopy architecture were made at five harvests. Species with different morphologies showed large differences in canopy structure, particularly when grass and forb species were compared. Setaria, a grass, had a more open canopy than the other species (all forbs), and was a consistently weak competitor. Overall, however, the relative effects of different neighbors on target biomass varied with target species. Target biomass was poorly correlated with neighbor biomass and leaf area, but was highly correlated with a measure of target light-interception ability that took into account both target leaf deployment and neighbor light interception. Despite clear differences among neighbor species in canopy structure and effect on light penetration, the results suggest no broad generalizations about the effects of different species as neighbors. Knowledge of morphological, physiological, and life history characteristics of both the target and neighbor species may be necessary to explain the results of their competition. 53 refs., 4 figs., 4 tabs.

An experiment assessed the impact of disability-job fit stereotypes and reward interdependence on personnel judgments about persons with disabilities. Students (N = 87) evaluated 3 confederates. The experiment varied disability of the target confederate (dyslexia vs. nondisabled), task, and dependence of rater rewards on partner performance. Two disability-task combinations represented stereotypical poor fit and good fit. Dependent variables were performance evaluations, performance expectations, and ranking of target as a partner. There was negative bias against the confederate with dyslexia in poor-fit conditions. In the interdependent reward condition, there was a negative main effect for disability, regardless of fit. No effects for disability were found on performance ratings or expectations. Results indicate the need to consider disability-job fit stereotypes and consequences to raters when assessing the impact of disability on personnel judgments. PMID:9494442

... INVESTMENT ACT Student Support § 670.620 Are Job Corps students eligible to receive cash allowances and... students with post-separation allowances. (b) In the event of a student's death, any amount due under...

... INVESTMENT ACT Student Support § 670.620 Are Job Corps students eligible to receive cash allowances and... students with post-separation allowances. (b) In the event of a student's death, any amount due under...

... INVESTMENT ACT Student Support § 670.620 Are Job Corps students eligible to receive cash allowances and... students with post-separation allowances. (b) In the event of a student's death, any amount due under...

Despite evidence that the accurate assessment of occupational health should include measures of both generic job demands and occupation-specific job demands, most research includes only generic job demands. The inclusion of more focused occupation-specific job demands is suggested to explain a larger proportion of variance for both direct effects and job demands × job control/support interaction effects, as compared with the inclusion of generic job demands. This research tested these two propositions via a self-report survey assessing key psychological job characteristics administered twice to a sample of correctional workers (N = 746). The research clearly identified that the assessment of correctional-specific job demands (CJD) was more strongly associated with job satisfaction, work engagement, turnover intentions and psychological strain, as compared with an assessment of generic job demands. However, the CJD did not produce a greater proportion of significant job demands × job control/support interaction effects, as compared with the generic job demands measure. The results thereby provide further support for the acknowledged 'elusiveness' of these theoretical interactions. Overall, however, the results did support the inclusion of occupation-specific measures of job demands for the accurate assessment of the health and jobperformance of high-risk workers. The implications for theoretical discussions that describe how high job demands are moderated by job resources are discussed. PMID:24123665

Tested the mastery hypothesis as an explanation for the affective benefits of acute exercise. Undergraduate women from a self-selected aerobic dance class rated their exercise performance following class. Affect questionnaires were completed before and at 5 and 20 minutes after the class. Results showed an overall improvement in affect following…

Many factors contribute to student achievement. This study focuses on three areas: how students learn, how student personality type affectsperformance, and how course format affectsperformance outcomes. The analysis sought to improve understanding of the direction and magnitude with which each of these factors impacts student success. Improved…

Integrating 2 theoretical perspectives on predictor-criterion relationships, the present study developed and tested a hierarchical framework in which each five-factor model (FFM) personality trait comprises 2 DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson (2007) facets, which in turn comprise 6 Costa and McCrae (1992) NEO facets. Both theoretical perspectives-the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma and construct correspondence-suggest that lower order traits would better predict facets of jobperformance (task performance and contextual performance). They differ, however, as to the relative merits of broad and narrow traits in predicting a broad criterion (overall jobperformance). We first meta-analyzed the relationship of the 30 NEO facets to overall jobperformance and its facets. Overall, 1,176 correlations from 410 independent samples (combined N = 406,029) were coded and meta-analyzed. We then formed the 10 DeYoung et al. facets from the NEO facets, and 5 broad traits from those facets. Overall, results provided support for the 6-2-1 framework in general and the importance of the NEO facets in particular. PMID:24016206

Job enrichment means giving people more decision-making power, more responsibility, more grasp of the totality of the job, and a sense of their own importance in the company. This article presents evidence of the successful working of this approach (Donnelly Mirrors), and the lack of success with an opposing approach (General Motors). (NL)

Growing evidence suggests that positive affect and reward have differential effects on cognitive control. So far, however, these effects have never been studied together. Here, the authors present one behavioral study investigating the influences of positive affect and reward (contingent and noncontingent) on proactive control. A modified version of the AX-continuous performance task, which has repeatedly been shown to be sensitive to reward and affect manipulations, was used. In a first phase, two experimental groups received either neutral or positive affective pictures before every trial. In a second phase, the two halves of a given affect group additionally received, respectively, performance-contingent or random rewards. The results replicated the typical affect effect, in terms of reduced proactive control under positive as compared to neutral affect. Also, the typical reward effects associated with increased proactive control were replicated. Most interestingly, performance-contingent reward counteracted the positive affect effect, whereas random reward mirrored that effect. In sum, this study provides first evidence that performance-contingent reward, on the one hand, and positive affect and performance-noncontingent reward, on the other hand, have oppositional effects on cognitive control: Only performance-contingent reward showed a motivational effect in terms of a strategy shift toward increased proactive control, whereas positive affect alone and performance-noncontingent reward reduced proactive control. Moreover, the integrative design of this study revealed the vulnerability of positive affect effects to motivational manipulations. The results are discussed with respect to current neuroscientific theories of the effects of dopamine on affect, reward, and cognitive control. PMID:24659000

Objective An intervention existing of an evidence-based medicine (EBM) course in combination with case method learning sessions (CMLSs) was designed to enhance the professional performance, self-efficacy and job satisfaction of occupational physicians. Methods A cluster randomized controlled trial was set up and data were collected through questionnaires at baseline (T0), directly after the intervention (T1) and 7 months after baseline (T2). The data of the intervention group [T0 (n = 49), T1 (n = 31), T2 (n = 29)] and control group [T0 (n = 49), T1 (n = 28), T2 (n = 28)] were analysed in mixed model analyses. Mean scores of the perceived value of the CMLS were calculated in the intervention group. Results The overall effect of the intervention over time comparing the intervention with the control group was statistically significant for professional performance (p Job satisfaction and self-efficacy changes were small and not statistically significant between the groups. The perceived value of the CMLS to gain new insights and to improve the quality of their performance increased with the number of sessions followed. Conclusion An EBM course in combination with case method learning sessions is perceived as valuable and offers evidence to enhance the professional performance of occupational physicians. However, it does not seem to influence their self-efficacy and job satisfaction. PMID:18386046

Discusses the recent trends in job opportunities for aerospace engineers. Mentions some of the political, technological, and economic factors affecting the overall employment picture. Includes a description of the job prospects created by the general upswing of the large commercial aircraft market. (TW)

The goal of the current study was to test a model where organizational resources (aimed at managing work and family responsibilities) predict job attitudes and supervisor ratings of performance through the mechanisms of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment. Employees (n = 174) at a large metropolitan hospital were surveyed at two time periods regarding perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), family supportive organizational perceptions (FSOP), bidirectional work-family conflict, bidirectional work-family enrichment, and job attitudes. Supervisors were also asked to provide performance ratings at Time 2. Results revealed FSSB at Time 1 predicted job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to leave, as well as supervisor ratings of performance, at Time 2. In addition, both work-family enrichment and family-work enrichment were found to mediate relationships between FSSB and various organizational outcomes, while work-family conflict was not a significant mediator. Results support further testing of supervisor behaviors specific to family support, as well models that include bidirectional work-family enrichment as the mechanism by which work-family resources predict employee and organizational outcomes. PMID:22149204

Positive affect is related to cognitive performance in multiple ways. It is associated with motivational aspects of performance, affective states capture attention, and information processing modes are a function of affect. In this study, we examined whether these links are relevant within individuals across time when they experience minor ups and downs of positive affect and work on cognitive tasks in the laboratory on a day-to-day basis. Using a microlongitudinal design, 101 younger adults (20-31 years of age) worked on 3 working memory tasks on about 100 occasions. Every day, they also reported on their momentary affect and their motivation to work on the tasks. In 2 of the 3 tasks, performance was enhanced on days when positive affect was above average. This performance enhancement was also associated with more motivation. Importantly, increases in task performance on days with above-average positive affect were mainly unrelated to variations in negative affect. This study's results are in line with between-person findings suggesting that high levels of well-being are associated with successful outcomes. They imply that success on cognitively demanding tasks is more likely on days when feeling happier. PMID:24364855

A study examined the way in which stockpiling job applications affects a firm's search for a new employee when an opening arises and the extent to which employers make use of applications they have stockpiled. Data on these questions were obtained from a survey of 2,264 employers that was sponsored by the National Institute of Education and the…

The classroom became a working economics laboratory for third graders at Humboldt School in Canyon City, Oregon, beginning with their duties as classroom helpers. By giving the tasks the importance of real-life jobs, the youngsters soon discovered individual likes, dislikes, and capabilities which affected their attitudes toward work. (Author)

INTRODUCTION This study examines the relationship between the clinical performance of medical students and their performance as doctors during their internships. METHODS This retrospective study involved 63 applicants of a residency programme conducted at Chonnam National University Hospital, South Korea, in November 2012. We compared the performance of the applicants during their internship with their clinical performance during their fourth year of medical school. The performance of the applicants as interns was periodically evaluated by the faculty of each department, while their clinical performance as fourth-year medical students was assessed using the Clinical Performance Examination (CPX) and the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). RESULTS The performance of the applicants as interns was positively correlated with their clinical performance as fourth-year medical students, as measured by the CPX and OSCE. The performance of the applicants as interns was moderately correlated with the patient-physician interaction items addressing communication and interpersonal skills in the CPX. CONCLUSION The clinical performance of medical students during their fourth year in medical school was related to their performance as medical interns. Medical students should be trained to develop good clinical skills through actual encounters with patients or simulated encounters using manikins, to enable them to become more competent doctors. PMID:26768172

The National Job Analysis Study (NJAS) originated from the work of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills and was designed to provide research necessary to identify and establish a taxonomy of workplace skills. Phase 1 identified an initial set of core behaviors common across occupations. The process began by identifying task…

We used a false-biofeedback methodology to manipulate physiological arousal in order to induce affective states that would influence learners' metacognitive judgments and learning performance. False-biofeedback is a method used to induce physiological arousal (and resultant affective states) by presenting learners with audio stimuli of false heart…

This document contains two sections: implementation of the performance-based Occupational Affective Behavior Analysis (OABA), and supporting research. Section 1 presents OABA, an analytic procedure designed to identify those affective behaviors important to success in an occupation, and gives directions on how to implement the procedure. The…

In the era of the Internet, factors which influence effective learning in a Web-based learning environment are well worth exploring. In addition to knowledge acquisition and skills training, affect is also an important factor, since successful learning requires excellent affectiveperformance. Thus this study focuses on learners' affective…

We draw from personality systems interaction (PSI) theory (Kuhl, 2000) and regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) to examine how dynamic positive and negative affective processes interact to predict both task and contextual performance. Using a twice-daily diary design over the course of a 3-week period, results from multilevel regression analysis revealed that distinct patterns of change in positive and negative affect optimally predicted contextual and task performance among a sample of 71 employees at a medium-sized technology company. Specifically, within persons, increases (upshifts) in positive affect over the course of a workday better predicted the subsequent day's organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) when such increases were coupled with decreases (downshifts) in negative affect. The optimal pattern of change in positive and negative affect differed, however, in predicting task performance. That is, upshifts in positive affect over the course of the workday better predicted the subsequent day's task performance when such upshifts were accompanied by upshifts in negative affect. The contribution of our findings to PSI theory and the broader affective and motivation regulation literatures, along with practical implications, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record PMID:26882443

In every learning situation or environment, human psychology plays a significant role. English speaking is a language skill that is highly affected by human psychology. This research aimed at describing the psychological factor that affects negatively the English speaking performance for the English learners in Indonesia. A descriptive qualitative…

We examined subjective cognitive complaints, affective distress, and cognitive performance in Persian Gulf veterans who reported illness and cognitive complaints. We predicted a stronger relationship between subjective cognitive complaints and affective distress than between subjective cognitive complaints and objective cognitive performance. This prediction was confirmed in a sample of 100 veterans. The results suggest that cognitive impairment should not be diagnosed in this population without objective confirmation with cognitive testing. PMID:14590580

The Delphi method was used to obtain estimates from 15 experts in medical education and biomedical communications of events and conditions which might occur in the next 20 years in biocommunications, health care services, and medical education that would effect the job and training requirements for future medical librarians. Ninety-five events and…

This study tested and refined the job demands-resources model, demonstrating that several job resources play a role in buffering the impact of several job demands on burnout. A total of 1,012 employees of a large institute for higher education participated in the study. Four demanding aspects of the job (e.g., work overload, emotional demands) and 4 job resources (e.g., autonomy, performance feedback) were used to test the central hypothesis that the interaction between (high) demands and (low) resources produces the highest levels of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, reduced professional efficacy). The hypothesis was rejected for (reduced) professional efficacy but confirmed for exhaustion and cynicism regarding 18 out of 32 possible 2-way interactions (i.e., combinations of specific job demands and resources). PMID:15826226

This publication consists of job task analyses for jobs in textile manufacturing. Information provided for each job in the greige and finishing plants includes job title, job purpose, and job duties with related educational objectives, curriculum, assessment, and outcome. These job titles are included: yarn manufacturing head overhauler, yarn…

Short-term longitudinal study assessed single and combined effects of two interventions designed to affect nursing assistants' (n=193) performance by increasing knowledge and motivation. Four sites included skills training only, job redesign only, both interventions, and control. Significant differences were found in knowledge in comparisons…

This study investigated the longitudinal associations between children's academic performance and their mothers' affect, practices, and perceptions of their children in homework situations. The children's (n = 2,261) performance in reading and math was tested in Grade 1 and Grade 4, and the mothers (n = 1,476) filled out questionnaires on their…

When leaders interact in teams with their subordinates, they build social capital that can have positive effects on team performance. Does this social capital affect team performance because subordinates come to see the leader as charismatic? We answered this question by examining 2 models. First, we tested the charisma-to-centrality model…

Some Factor's That Affecting The Mathematic Teacher Performance For Junior High School In Medan. This research will examine the effect of direct and indirect of the Organizational Knowledge towards the achievement motivation, decision making, organizational commitment, the performance of mathematics teacher. The research method is a method of…

This study investigated the longitudinal associations between children's academic performance and their mothers' affect, practices, and perceptions of their children in homework situations. The children's (n = 2,261) performance in reading and math was tested in Grade 1 and Grade 4, and the mothers (n = 1,476) filled out questionnaires on their affect, practices, and perceptions while their children were in Grades 2, 3, and 4. The results showed, first, that the more help in homework the mothers reported, the slower was the development of their children's academic performance from Grade 1 to Grade 4. This negative association was true especially if mothers perceived their children not to be able to work autonomously. Second, children's good academic performance in Grade 1 predicted mothers' perception of child's ability to be autonomous and positive affect in homework situations later on, whereas poor performance predicted mothers' negative affect, help, and monitoring. Finally, mothers' negative affect mediated the association between children's poor performance, maternal practices, and perceptions of their children. PMID:25798959

Dysfunctions in role performance have been associated with a large number of consequences, almost always negative, which affect the well-being of workers and the functioning of organizations. An individual's experience of receiving incompatible or conflicting requests (role conflict) and/or the lack of enough information to carry out his/her job (role ambiguity) are causes of role stress. According to previous theory, role ambiguity and conflict decrease workers' performance and are positively related to the probability of workers leaving the organization. Job satisfaction refers to a positive evaluation of a job, while organizational commitment refers to an employee's attachment to the organization. The affective dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction are considered to be important predictors of turnover intention, absenteeism, and jobperformance. In the literature, role conflict and ambiguity have been proposed as determining factors of workers' job satisfaction and their commitment towards the organization. The role of job satisfaction and organizational commitment were analysed as variables that should mediate between role ambiguity and conflict and employees' behaviour. The hypotheses were confirmed by means of path analysis carried out with data obtained from a sample of Spanish blue-collar workers employed by a bus company and a water supply company. Role stressors were negatively related to affective commitment mediated through job satisfaction. Affective commitment to the organization exerted a positive influence on performance and reduces the withdrawal behaviour analysed— intention to leave and absenteeism—although the strongest predictor of intention to leave was, in this study, job satisfaction. PMID:22029494

This study investigated the extent to which mothers' psychological control predicts their children's mathematical performance during the children's transition from preschool to primary school over and above the impact of maternal affection and behavioral control. Also investigated was the extent to which maternal affection and behavioral control moderate the impact of mothers' psychological control. Children 5-6 years old at baseline (N=196) were followed up 6 times to measure their performance in mathematics over a 3-year period from preschool to 2nd grade. Mothers were asked to fill in a questionnaire measuring their parenting styles once every year over the 3-year period. A high level of psychological control exercised by mothers predicted their children's slow progress in mathematics. However, this impact was particularly evident among those children whose mothers reported a high level of affection. No evidence was found that children's mathematical performance had any effect on their mothers' parenting styles. PMID:15535751

Little is known about the job strain of staff working in disability institutions. This study investigated the staff's job strain profile and its determinants which included the worker characteristics and the psychosocial working environments in Taiwan. A cross-sectional study survey was carried out among 1243 workers by means of a self-answered questionnaire. The outcome variable (high-strain job) was evaluated. The explanatory variables were: worker characteristics and the psychosocial working environment evaluated according to Karasek's Job Demand-Control-Support model. The results show that many staff characteristics were correlated with job strain, such as staff's working hours, age, gender, job title, educational level, religion, in-job training, working years in disability institutions and Effort-Reward Imbalance factors. Organization factors, such as geographical, institutional ownership and accreditation performance and size were also correlated with staff's job strain. In multiple a logistic regression model of the job strain, we found that the factors of financial reward (high compare to low, OR=0.95, 95% CI=0.928-0.975), extrinsic effort (high compare to low, OR=1.072, 95% CI=1.072-1.158), perceived job stress (sometimes stressful compare to no stress, OR=2.305, 95% CI=1.161-4.575; very stressful compare to no stress, OR=3.931, 95% CI=1.738-8.893) of the staff were significantly correlated to the high job strain of the staff. An important focus of future research should be extending the findings to consider the factors to affect the high job strain to improve the well-being for staff working for people with intellectual disability. PMID:18434088

This study attempted to identify the important factors that affect the performance of a laboratory fume hood and the relationship between the factors and hood performance under various conditions by analyzing and generalizing the results from other studies that quantitatively investigated fume hood performance. A literature search identified 43 studies that were published from 1966 to 2006. For each of those studies, information on the type of test methods used, the factors investigated, and the findings were recorded and summarized. Among the 43 quantitative experimental studies, 21 comparable studies were selected, and then a meta-analysis of the comparable studies was conducted. The exposure concentration variable from the resulting 617 independent test conditions was dichotomized into acceptable or unacceptable using the control level of 0.1 ppm tracer gas. Regression analysis using Cox proportional hazards models provided hood failure ratios for potential exposure determinants. The variables that were found to be statistically significant were the presence of a mannequin/human subject, the distance between a source and breathing zone, and the height of sash opening. In summary, performance of laboratory fume hoods was affected mainly by the presence of a mannequin/human subject, distance between a source and breathing zone, and height of sash opening. Presence of a mannequin/human subject in front of the hood adversely affects hood performance. Worker exposures to air contaminants can be greatly reduced by increasing the distance between the contaminant source and breathing zone and by reducing the height of sash opening. Many other factors can also affect hood performance. Checking face velocity by itself is unlikely to be sufficient in evaluating hood performance properly. An evaluation of the performance of a laboratory fume hood should be performed with a human subject or a mannequin in front of the hood and should address the effects of the activities

Easter Seal Society for Crippled Children and Adults of Washington, Seattle.

Intended for use by employers for assessing how "job-ready" their particular business environment may be, the booklet provides information illustrating what physical changes could be made to allow persons with mobility limitations to enter and conduct business independently in a particular building. Illustrations along with brief explanations are…

Information and accompanying exercises are provided in this learning module to reinforce basic reading, writing, and math skills and, at the same time, introduce personal assessment and job-seeking techniques. The module's first section provides suggestions for assessing personal interests and identifying the assets one has to offer an employer.…

This paper attempts to identify the extent to which the affective characteristics of Malaysian and Singaporean students' attainment compared to the OECD average in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, and examine the influence of students' affective characteristics, gender, and their socioeconomic status on mathematics performance at both student and school levels. Sample consisted of 5197 and 5546 15-year-old Malaysian and Singaporean students. Data were analysed using hierarchical linear modelling approach with HLM 7.0 software. Results showed that the Index of economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS), mathematics self-efficacy, and mathematics anxiety have significant effects on mathematics performance in Malaysia and Singapore at the student level. Proportion of boys at the school level has no significant effects on mathematics performance for both Malaysian and Singaporean students. ESCS mean at the school level has positive and significant effects on mathematics performance in Malaysia, but not in Singapore. Limitations, implications, and future studies were discussed. PMID:26543698

Introduction Previous research has shown that performance on cognitive tasks administered in the scanner can be altered by the scanner environment. There are no previous studies that have investigated the impact of scanner noise using a well-validated measure of affective change. The goal of this study was to determine whether performance on an affective attentional task or emotional response to the task would change in the presence of distracting acoustic noise, such as that encountered in an MRI environment. Method Thirty-four young adults with no self-reported history of neurologic disorder or mental illness completed three blocks of the affective Posner task outside of the scanner. The task was meant to induce frustration through monetary contingencies and rigged feedback. Participants completed a self-assessment manikin at the end of each block to rate their mood, arousal level, and sense of dominance. During the task, half of the participants heard noise (recorded from a 4T MRI system), and half heard no noise. Results The affective Posner task led to significant reductions in mood and increases in arousal in healthy participants. The presence of scanner noise did not impact task performance; however, individuals in the noise group did report significantly poorer mood throughout the task. Conclusions The results of the present study suggest that the acoustic qualities of MRI enhance frustration effects on an affective attentional task and that scanner noise may influence mood during similar fMRI tasks. PMID:26059389

The aim of the study was to measure incidence of oral impacts on daily performances and their related features in a low dental disease population. 501 people aged 35-44 years in 16 rural villages in Ban Phang district, Khon Kaen, Thailand, were interviewed about oral impacts on nine physical, psychological and social aspects of performance during the past 6 months, and then had an oral examination. The clinical and behavioural data showed that the sample had low caries (DMFT = 2.7) and a low utilization of dental services. 73.6% of all subjects had at least one daily performanceaffected by an oral impact. The highest incidence of performancesaffected were Eating (49.7%), Emotional stability (46.5%) and Smiling (26.1%). Eating, Emotional stability and Cleaning teeth performances had a high frequency or long duration of impacts, but a low severity. The low frequency performances; Physical activities, Major role activity and Sleeping were rated as high severity. Pain and discomfort were mainly perceived as the causes of impacts (40.1%) for almost every performance except Smiling. Toothache was the major causal oral condition (32.7%) of almost all aspects of performance. It was concluded that this low caries people have as high an incidence of oral impacts as industrialized, high dental disease populations. Frequency and severity presented the paradoxical effect on different performances and should both be taken into account for overall estimation of impacts. PMID:9007354

This study tested the hypothesis that enhanced neural arousal in response to performance errors would predict poor affect and coping behaviors in everyday life. Participants were preselected as either low-depressed (LD) or high-depressed (HD) based on a screening questionnaire, and they then completed a laboratory Stroop task while EEG was recorded, followed by a 2-week period of daily reports of affect and coping behaviors. The EEG measure of arousal response to errors was the degree of error-related alpha suppression (ERAS) in the intertrial interval, that is the reduction in alpha power following errors compared with correct responses. ERAS was relatively heightened at frontal sites for the HD versus the LD group, and frontal ERAS predicted lower positive affect, higher negative affect, and less adaptive coping behaviors in the daily reports. Together, the results imply that heightened arousal following mistakes is associated with suboptimal emotion and coping with stressors. PMID:23731439

This paper examined internal challenges affecting academic performance of student-athletes in Ghanaian public universities, using a descriptive survey research design. Proportionate random sampling technique was employed to select Three Hundred and Thirty-Two (332) respondents for the study. The instrument used in gathering data for the study was…

In this study, the authors found that the most important factor that affected student performance was their competence in speaking English. The sample was a group of 864 business and economics students in United Arab Emirates. The authors used regression analysis for the study. The results of the study showed that students who participated in…

Some educators argue that entry standards are the most important determinants of successful completion of a university programme; others maintain that non-academic factors must also be considered. In this study we sought to investigate open and distance learning students' perceptions of the factors affecting academic performance and successful…

The research aimed to investigate the core competency elements and the factors affecting the performance efficiency of the civil service teachers in the northeastern region, Thailand. The research procedure consisted of two steps. In the first step, the data were collected using a questionnaire with the reliability (Cronbach's Alpha) of 0.90. The…

In the Philippines, students seeking admission to a university are usually required to meet certain entrance requirements, including passing the entrance examinations with questions on IQ and English, mathematics, and science. This paper aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of entrants into business programmes in high-stakes…

This paper reports the findings of a Master's level thesis work that was done in 1997 to assess the antecedent factors affecting the academic performance of graduate students at the Nairobi Evangelical School of Theology (N.E.G.S.T.), which is currently Africa International University (AIU). The paper reviews the effect of lack of finance on…

The Neutron Science Portal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory submits jobs to the TeraGrid for remote job execution. The TeraGrid is a network of high performance computers supported by the US National Science Foundation. There are eleven partner facilities with over a petaflop of peak computing performance and sixty petabytes of long-term storage. Globus is installed on a local machine and used for job submission. The graphical user interface is produced by java coding that reads an XML file. After submission, the status of the job is displayed in a Job Information Service window which queries globus for the status. The output folder produced in the scratch directory of the TeraGrid machine is returned to the portal with globus-url-copy command that uses the gridftp servers on the TeraGrid machines. This folder is copied from the stage-in directory of the community account to the user's results directory where the output can be plotted using the portal's visualization services. The primary problem with remote job execution is diagnosing execution problems. We have daily tests of submitting multiple remote jobs from the portal. When these jobs fail on a computer, it is difficult to diagnose the problem from the globus output. Successes and problems will be presented.

Background Healthy university students have been shown to use psychoactive substances, expecting them to be functional means for enhancing their cognitive capacity, sometimes over and above an essentially proficient level. This behavior called Neuroenhancement (NE) has not yet been integrated into a behavioral theory that is able to predict performance. Job Demands Resources (JD-R) Theory for example assumes that strain (e.g. burnout) will occur and influence performance when job demands are high and job resources are limited at the same time. The aim of this study is to investigate whether or not university students’ self-reported NE can be integrated into JD-R Theory’s comprehensive approach to psychological health and performance. Methods 1,007 students (23.56 ± 3.83 years old, 637 female) participated in an online survey. Lifestyle drug, prescription drug, and illicit substance NE together with the complete set of JD-R variables (demands, burnout, resources, motivation, and performance) were measured. Path models were used in order to test our data’s fit to hypothesized main effects and interactions. Results JD-R Theory could successfully be applied to describe the situation of university students. NE was mainly associated with the JD-R Theory’s health impairment process: Lifestyle drug NE (p performance. From a public health perspective, intervention strategies should address these costs of non-supervised NE. With regard to future research we propose to model NE as a means to reach an end (i

In this article, we report on a study examining those factors which contribute to the mathematics performance of a sample of children aged between 8 and 13 years. The study was designed specifically to consider the potency of a number of mathematical affective factors, as well as background characteristics (viz., gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status), on children's mathematics performance. Data were collected by surveying the children and drawing on performance ratings from their teachers. A correlation analysis revealed that the relationships between the respective dispositional and background variables with mathematics performance were significant and in the direction as predicted. Moreover, the findings from a logistic regression showed that a combination of these variables was able to appropriately classify students who either were below-average or above-average mathematics performers. We pay particular attention to the influence of certain dispositions with respect to mathematics performance and conclude by detailing the implications of the study for teachers and researchers.

We present a cross-cultural study on the performance and perception of affective expression in music. Professional bowed-string musicians from different musical traditions (Swedish folk music, Hindustani classical music, Japanese traditional music, and Western classical music) were instructed to perform short pieces of music to convey 11 emotions and related states to listeners. All musical stimuli were judged by Swedish, Indian, and Japanese participants in a balanced design, and a variety of acoustic and musical cues were extracted. Results first showed that the musicians' expressive intentions could be recognized with accuracy above chance both within and across musical cultures, but communication was, in general, more accurate for culturally familiar versus unfamiliar music, and for basic emotions versus nonbasic affective states. We further used a lens-model approach to describe the relations between the strategies that musicians use to convey various expressions and listeners' perceptions of the affective content of the music. Many acoustic and musical cues were similarly correlated with both the musicians' expressive intentions and the listeners' affective judgments across musical cultures, but the match between musicians' and listeners' uses of cues was better in within-cultural versus cross-cultural conditions. We conclude that affective expression in music may depend on a combination of universal and culture-specific factors. PMID:23398579

Affective temperament has been suggested as a potential mediator of the effect between genetic predisposition and neurocognitive functioning. As such, this report seeks to assess the extent of the correlation between affective temperament and cognitive function in a group of bipolar II subjects. 46 bipolar II outpatients [mean age 41.4 years (SD 18.2); female 58.9%] and 46 healthy controls [mean age 35.1 years (SD 18); female 56.5%] were evaluated with regard to their demographic and clinical characteristics, affective temperament, and neurocognitive performance. Crude bivariate correlation analyses and multiple linear regression models were constructed between five affective temperament subscales and eight neurocognitive domains. Significant correlations were identified in bipolar patients between hyperthymic temperament and verbal memory and premorbid IQ; cyclothymic temperament and attention; and irritable temperament, attention, and verbal fluency. In adjusting for potential confounders of the relationship between temperament and cognitive function, the strongest mediating factors among the euthymic bipolar patients were found to be residual manic and depressive symptoms. It is therefore concluded that affective temperaments may partially influence the neurocognitive performance of both healthy controls and euthymic patients with bipolar disorder type II in several specific domains. PMID:27086230

OBJECTIVE To explore how the two most important components of surgical performance - speed and accuracy - are influenced by different forms of stress and what the impact of music on these factors is. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA Based on a recently published pilot study on surgical experts, we designed an experiment examining the effects of auditory stress, mental stress, and music on surgical performance and learning, and then correlated the data psychometric measures to the role of music in a novice surgeon’s life. METHODS 31 surgeons were recruited for a crossover study. Surgeons were randomized to four simple standardized tasks to be performed on the Surgical SIM VR laparoscopic simulator, allowing exact tracking of speed and accuracy. Tasks were performed under a variety of conditions, including silence, dichotic music (auditory stress), defined classical music (auditory relaxation), and mental loading (mental arithmetic tasks). Tasks were performed twice to test for memory consolidation and to accommodate for baseline variability. Performance was correlated to the Brief Musical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ). RESULTS Mental loading influences performance with respect to accuracy, speed, and recall more negatively than does auditory stress. Defined classical music might lead to minimally worse performance initially, but leads to significantly improved memory consolidation. Furthermore, psychologic testing of the volunteers suggests that surgeons with greater musical commitment, measured by the MEQ, perform worse under the mental loading condition. CONCLUSION Mental distraction and auditory stress negatively affect specific components of surgical learning and performance. If used appropriately, classical music may positively affect surgical memory consolidation. It also may be possible to predict surgeons’ performance and learning under stress through psychological tests on the role of music in a surgeon’s life. Further investigation is necessary to determine

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a team-building learning project on job satisfaction, psychological wellbeing, and performance of health care workers involved in the process of organ and tissue donation. The project was conducted between June and September 2011 and consisted of two one-day meetings and a one week sailing, involving 20 staff members. GHQ-12, MBI-HSS, and 25 items taken from the Multidimensional Organizational Health Questionnaire (MOHQ) were used to assess health status, burnout, and job satisfaction. Results of the descriptive analyses were expressed as mean ± SD and as counts and percentages; Chi-square test was used to evaluate statistical significance of differences before and after the initiative. 6 (30,0%) participants showed the likelihood to suffering from anxiety and depression (i.e. recognized as 'cases' by the GHQ-12), 3 (15.0%) of them at baseline and 3 (15.0%), different from the previous ones, in the post-intervention. The presence of stress was revealed in 9 (45.0%) and 12 subjects (60.0%) before and after the experience, respectively (6 subjects showed the presence of stress in both circumstances). We documented 4 burnout cases, 3 (15.0%) at baseline and 1 (5.0%) after the experience. Nevertheless, about 80% of the participants showed a high degree ofjob satisfaction, in terms of positive influence of job in the professional satisfaction and of clear satisfaction for the organization, during both evaluation. In respect to 2010, the number of organ donors and that of ocular tissue donors improved of about 16% and 10%, respectively, during the year of the project and in the following year (mean value). We recognize that our team-building project for personnel involved in the stressful and demanding setting of organ and tissue donation, worthwhile and recompensing at the same time, possibly influenced the personal commitment and the quality of job provided. The high level of stress showed by participants should be

The effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance psychological variables related to cognitive performance were studied in 44 college students. Participants completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal after either 24 hours of sleep deprivation or approximately 8 hours of sleep. After completing the cognitive task, the participants completed 2 questionnaires, one assessing self-reported effort, concentration, and estimated performance, the other assessing off-task cognitions. As expected, sleep-deprived participants performed significantly worse than the nondeprived participants on the cognitive task. However, the sleep-deprived participants rated their concentration and effort higher than the nondeprived participants did. In addition, the sleep-deprived participants rated their estimated performance significantly higher than the nondeprived participants did. The findings indicate that college students are not aware of the extent to which sleep deprivation negatively affects their ability to complete cognitive tasks. PMID:9394089

In this article we extend the scope of the interdependence between migration and job mobility: We investigate whether an individual's openness to migrate not only increases the probability of migration but also the likelihood to conduct a job search and exhibit job mobility. Using data from a three-wave panel study, which allows the analysis of temporal links between decision-making and subsequent events regarding migration and job mobility, a joint estimation of multiple equations is performed. We show that considering migration as an option for the future, which is our indicator of individuals' openness to migrate, is positively associated with both migration and job mobility. It even increases job mobility independently of whether migration takes place or not. These findings contribute significantly to our body of knowledge about the interdependence of migration and job mobility. Additionally, they enhance our understanding of the mechanisms behind a common selectivity of migrants and job mobile individuals. PMID:24468430

The attrition of females studying physics after high school has been a continuing concern for the physics education community. If females are well prepared, feel confident, and do well in introductory college physics, they may be inclined to study physics further. This quantitative study uses HLM to identify factors from high school physics preparation (content, pedagogy, and assessment) and the affective domain that predict female and male performance in introductory college physics. The study includes controls for student demographic and academic background characteristics, and the final dataset consists of 1973 surveys from 54 introductory college physics classes. The results highlight high school physics and affective experiences that differentially predict female and male performance. These experiences include: learning requirements, computer graphing/analysis, long written problems, everyday world examples, community projects cumulative tests/quizzes, father's encouragement, family's belief that science leads to a better career, and the length of time students believe that high school physics would help in university physics. There were also experiences that similarly predict female and male performance. The results paint a dynamic picture of the factors from high school physics and the affective domain that influence the future physics performance of females and males. The implication is that there are many aspects to the teaching of physics in high school that, although widely used and thought to be effective, need reform in their implementation in order to be fully beneficial to females and/or males in college.

Recent developments in high energy physics (HEP) including multi-core jobs and multi-core pilots require data centres to gain a deep understanding of the system to monitor, design, and upgrade computing clusters. Networking is a critical component. Especially the increased usage of data federations, for example in diskless computing centres or as a fallback solution, relies on WAN connectivity and availability. The specific demands of different experiments and communities, but also the need for identification of misbehaving batch jobs, requires an active monitoring. Existing monitoring tools are not capable of measuring fine-grained information at batch job level. This complicates network-aware scheduling and optimisations. In addition, pilots add another layer of abstraction. They behave like batch systems themselves by managing and executing payloads of jobs internally. The number of real jobs being executed is unknown, as the original batch system has no access to internal information about the scheduling process inside the pilots. Therefore, the comparability of jobs and pilots for predicting run-time behaviour or network performance cannot be ensured. Hence, identifying the actual payload is important. At the GridKa Tier 1 centre a specific tool is in use that allows the monitoring of network traffic information at batch job level. This contribution presents the current monitoring approach and discusses recent efforts and importance to identify pilots and their substructures inside the batch system. It will also show how to determine monitoring data of specific jobs from identified pilots. Finally, the approach is evaluated.

In this study, the authors developed a dual-concern (i.e., maintenance and performance) model of human resources (HR) management. The authors identified commonly examined HR practices that apply to the middle manager level and classified them into the maintenance- and performance-oriented HR subsystems. The authors found support for the 2-factor model on the basis of responses from 2,148 managers from 463 firms operating in China. Regression results indicate that the performance-oriented HR subsystems had a positive relationship with firm performance and that the relationship was mediated by middle managers' affective commitment to the firm. The maintenance-oriented HR subsystems had a positive relationship with middle managers' continuance commitment but not with their affective commitment and firm performance. This study contributes to the understanding of how HR practices relate to firm performance and offers an improved test of the argument that valuable and firm-specific HR provide a source of competitive advantage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved). PMID:19186911

When leaders interact in teams with their subordinates, they build social capital that can have positive effects on team performance. Does this social capital affect team performance because subordinates come to see the leader as charismatic? We answered this question by examining 2 models. First, we tested the charisma-to-centrality model according to which the leader's charisma facilitates the occupation of a central position in the informal advice network. From this central position, the leader positively influences team performance. Second, we examined the centrality-to-charisma model according to which charisma is attributed to those leaders who are socially active in terms of giving and receiving advice. Attributed charisma facilitates increased team performance. We tested these 2 models in 2 different studies. In the first study, based on time-separated, multisource data emanating from members of 56 work teams, we found support for the centrality-to-charisma model. Formal leaders who were central within team advice networks were seen as charismatic by subordinates, and this charisma was associated with high team performance. To clarify how leader network centrality affected the emergence of charismatic leadership, we designed Study 2 in which, for 79 student teams, we measured leader networking activity and leader charisma at 2 different points in time and related these variables to team performance measured at a third point in time. On the basis of this temporally separated data set, we again found support for the centrality-to-charisma model. PMID:21895351

The bioavailability of buserelin acetate when added to the seminal dose appears to be determined by the activity of the existing aminopeptidases. Thus, the addition of aminopeptidase inhibitors to rabbit semen extenders could be a solution to decrease the hormone degradation. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of the protease activity inhibition on rabbit semen quality parameters and reproductive performance after artificial insemination. Seminal quality was not affected by the incubation with protease inhibitors, being the values of motility, viability, and acrosome integrity not significantly different between the protease inhibitors and the control group. In addition, seminal plasma aminopeptidase activity was inhibited in a 55.1% by the protease inhibitors. On the other hand, regarding the effect of protease inhibitors on reproductive performance, our results showed that the presence of protease inhibitors affected the prolificacy rate (9.2 ± 0.26 and 9.3 ± 0.23 vs. 8.2 ± 0.22 total born per litter for negative control, positive control, and aminopeptidase inhibitors group, respectively; P affects prolificacy rate. Therefore, the development of new extenders with specific aminopeptidase inhibitors would be one of the strategies to increase the bioavailability of GnRH analogues without affecting the litter size. PMID:26639641

Self-efficacy beliefs in mathematics, as a dimension of the affective domain, are related with students' performance on solving tasks and mainly on overcoming cognitive obstacles. The present study investigated the interrelations of cognitive performance on geometry and young students' self-efficacy beliefs about using representations for solving geometrical tasks. The emphasis was on confirming a theoretical model for the primary-school and secondary-school students and identifying the differences and similarities for the two ages. A quantitative study was developed and data were collected from 1086 students in Grades 5-8. Confirmatory factor analysis affirmed the existence of a coherent model of affective dimensions about the use of representations for understanding the geometrical concepts, which becomes more stable across the educational levels.

Submerged macrophyte communities are frequently subjected to disturbance of various frequency and strength. However, there is still little experimental evidence on how mechanical disturbance affects the performance and species composition of such plant communities. In a greenhouse experiment, we constructed wetland communities consisting of five co-occurring clonal submerged macrophyte species (Hydrilla verticillata, Elodea canadensis, Ceratophyllum demersum, Chara fragilis, and Myriophyllum spicatum) and subjected these communities to three mechanical disturbance regimes (no, moderate and strong disturbance). Strong mechanical disturbance greatly decreased overall biomass, number of shoot nodes and total shoot length, and increased species diversity (evenness) of the total community. It also substantially decreased the growth of the most abundant species (H. verticillata), but did not affect growth of the other four species. Our data reveal that strong disturbance can have different effects on different submerged macrophyte species and thus alters the performance and species composition of submerged macrophyte communities.

Submerged macrophyte communities are frequently subjected to disturbance of various frequency and strength. However, there is still little experimental evidence on how mechanical disturbance affects the performance and species composition of such plant communities. In a greenhouse experiment, we constructed wetland communities consisting of five co-occurring clonal submerged macrophyte species (Hydrilla verticillata, Elodea canadensis, Ceratophyllum demersum, Chara fragilis, and Myriophyllum spicatum) and subjected these communities to three mechanical disturbance regimes (no, moderate and strong disturbance). Strong mechanical disturbance greatly decreased overall biomass, number of shoot nodes and total shoot length, and increased species diversity (evenness) of the total community. It also substantially decreased the growth of the most abundant species (H. verticillata), but did not affect growth of the other four species. Our data reveal that strong disturbance can have different effects on different submerged macrophyte species and thus alters the performance and species composition of submerged macrophyte communities. PMID:24811826

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an estrogenic endocrine disruptor used for producing polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. This study investigated the effects of oral BPA administration on memory performance, general activity, and emotionality in adult male Sprague Dawley rats using a battery of behavioral tests, including an appetite-motivated maze test (MAZE test) used to assess spatial memory performance. In addition, in order to confirm the effects of BPA on spatial memory performance, we examined whether intrahippocampal injection of BPA affects spatial memory consolidation. In the MAZE test, although oral BPA administration at 10 mg/kg significantly altered the number of entries into the incorrect area compared to those of vehicle-treated rats, male rats given BPA through either oral administration or intrahippocampal injection failed to show significant differences in latencies to reach the reward. Also, oral BPA administration did not affect fear-motivated memory performance in the step-through passive avoidance test. Oral BPA administration at 0.05 mg/kg, the lowest dose used in this study, was correlated with a decrease in locomotor activity in the open-field test, whereas oral administration at 10 mg/kg, the highest dose used in this study, was correlated with a light anxiolytic effect in the elevated plus-maze test. The present study suggests that BPA in adulthood has little effect on spatial memory performance in male rats. PMID:24326521

General activity and swimming performance (i.e., sprint speed and distance) of plains leopard frog tadpoles (Rana blairi) were examined after acute exposure to three sublethal concentrations of carbaryl (3.5, 5.0, and 7.2 mg/L). Both swimming performance and spontaneous swimming activity are important for carrying out life history functions (e.g., growth and development) and for escaping from predators. Measured tadpole activity diminished by nearly 90% at 3.5 mg/L carbaryl and completely ceased at 7.2 mg/L. Sprint speed and sprint distance also decreased significantly following exposure. Carbaryl affected both swimming performance and activity after just 24 h, suggesting that 24 h may be an adequate length of exposure to determine behavioral effects on tadpoles. Slight recovery of activity levels was noted at 24 and 48 h post-exposure; no recovery of swimming performance was observed. Reduction in activity and swimming performance may result in increased predation rates and, because activity is closely associated with feeding, may result in slowed growth leading to a failure to emerge before pond drying or an indirect reduction in adult fitness. Acute exposure to sublethal toxicants such as carbaryl may not only affect immediate survival of tadpoles but also impact critical life history functions and generate changes at the local population level.

We describe the use of behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic methods to examine individual differences in cognition and affect, guided by three criteria: (1) relevance to human performance in work and everyday settings; (2) interactions between working memory, decision-making, and affective processing; and (3) examination of individual differences. The results of behavioral, functional MRI (fMRI), event-related potential (ERP), and molecular genetic studies show that analyses at the group level often mask important findings associated with sub-groups of individuals. Dopaminergic/noradrenergic genes influencing prefrontal cortex activity contribute to inter-individual variation in working memory and decision behavior, including performance in complex simulations of military decision-making. The interactive influences of individual differences in anxiety, sensation seeking, and boredom susceptibility on evaluative decision-making can be systematically described using ERP and fMRI methods. We conclude that a multi-modal neuroergonomic approach to examining brain function (using both neuroimaging and molecular genetics) can be usefully applied to understanding individual differences in cognition and affect and has implications for human performance at work. PMID:21569853

This structured literature review examines the literature and addresses issues of job retention for adult workers with moderate to mild mental retardation (MR), investigating the relationships between work-related social behaviors, self-determination, person-job congruency of individuals with MR, and their jobperformance and job satisfaction with…

Gaps in research focusing on work related stress, burnout, job satisfaction and general health of nurses is evident within developing contexts like South Africa. This study identified the relationship between work related stress, burnout, job satisfaction and general health of nurses. A total of 1200 nurses from four hospitals were invited to participate in this cross-sectional study (75% response rate). Participants completed five questionnaires and multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine significant relationships between variables. Staff issues are best associated with burnout as well as job satisfaction. Burnout explained the highest amount of variance in mental health of nurses. These are known to compromise productivity and performance, as well as affect the quality of patient care. Issues, such as security risks in the workplace, affectjob satisfaction and health of nurses. Although this is more salient to developing contexts it is important in developing strategies and intervention programs towards improving nurse and patient related outcomes. PMID:25588157

Gaps in research focusing on work related stress, burnout, job satisfaction and general health of nurses is evident within developing contexts like South Africa. This study identified the relationship between work related stress, burnout, job satisfaction and general health of nurses. A total of 1200 nurses from four hospitals were invited to participate in this cross-sectional study (75% response rate). Participants completed five questionnaires and multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine significant relationships between variables. Staff issues are best associated with burnout as well as job satisfaction. Burnout explained the highest amount of variance in mental health of nurses. These are known to compromise productivity and performance, as well as affect the quality of patient care. Issues, such as security risks in the workplace, affectjob satisfaction and health of nurses. Although this is more salient to developing contexts it is important in developing strategies and intervention programs towards improving nurse and patient related outcomes. PMID:25588157

The Cascade Distillation Subsystem (CDS) is a rotary multistage distiller being developed to serve as the primary processor for wastewater recovery during long-duration space missions. The CDS could be integrated with a system similar to the International Space Station Water Processor Assembly to form a complete water recovery system for future missions. A preliminary chemical process simulation was previously developed using Aspen Custom Modeler® (ACM), but it could not simulate thermal startup and lacked detailed analysis of several key internal processes, including heat transfer between stages. This paper describes modifications to the ACM simulation of the CDS that improve its capabilities and the accuracy of its predictions. Notably, the modified version can be used to model thermal startup and predicts the total energy consumption of the CDS. The simulation has been validated for both NaC1 solution and pretreated urine feeds and no longer requires retuning when operating parameters change. The simulation was also used to predict how internal processes and operating conditions of the CDS affect its performance. In particular, it is shown that the coefficient of performance of the thermoelectric heat pump used to provide heating and cooling for the CDS is the largest factor in determining CDS efficiency. Intrastage heat transfer affects CDS performance indirectly through effects on the coefficient of performance.

Sensory systems are very susceptible to early environment experience. Mating success depends on the transmission of information from the signaller to the receiver, which means that sensory biases caused by developmental environment are likely to affect sexual selection. We investigated the impact of the developmental visual environment (light spectrum) on male copulation behaviour and female preference in the lekking tephritid Anastrepha ludens. We reared flies in four different light spectrum conditions - red light, blue light, shaded light and darkness - during their first 16 days after emerging from pupae. We found that the light environment experienced during early adulthood affected mating frequency and, in some cases, the latency to copulate, but not copulation duration. Males exposed to any of the three light treatments (red, blue or shaded light) were more frequently chosen as mating partners than dark-reared males. Flies reared under dark conditions exhibited the lowest mating performance out of any of the rearing environments. Under field cage conditions, a slight assortative mating between blue- and red-light-reared flies was detected. Additionally, females reared in blue light and darkness mated less compared with females reared in red and shaded light. Our data demonstrate that male mating behaviour is flexible in response to light environment. The findings suggest that light spectrum only weakly affects the direction of sexual selection by female choice; however, dark rearing environments deeply affect mating success. PMID:21753054

Typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years were exposed to artificial grammar learning. Following an implicit exposure phase, half of the participants received neutral instructions at test while the other half received instructions making a direct, explicit reference to the training phase. We first aimed to assess whether implicit learning operated in the two test conditions. We then evaluated the differential impact of age on learning performances as a function of test instructions. The results showed that performance did not vary as a function of age in the implicit instructions condition, while age effects emerged when explicit instructions were employed at test. However, performance was affected differently by age and the instructions given at test, depending on whether the implicit learning of short or long units was assessed. These results suggest that the claim that the implicit learning process is independent of age needs to be revised. PMID:23326409

... page: //medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000884.htm Overcoming job stress To use the sharing features on this ... you stay healthy and feel better. Causes of Job Stress Although the cause of job stress is ...

Instant messaging (IM) has become one of the most popular forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and is especially prevalent on college campuses. Previous research suggests that IM users often multitask while conversing online. To date, no one has yet examined the cognitive effect of concurrent IM use. Participants in the present study (N = 69) completed a reading comprehension task uninterrupted or while concurrently holding an IM conversation. Participants who IMed while performing the reading task took significantly longer to complete the task, indicating that concurrent IM use negatively affects efficiency. Concurrent IM use did not affect reading comprehension scores. Additional analyses revealed that the more time participants reported spending on IM, the lower their reading comprehension scores. Finally, we found that the more time participants reported spending on IM, the lower their self-reported GPA. Implications and future directions are discussed. PMID:19006461

Semantic fluency (SF) and phonological fluency (PF) were examined in large groups of schizophrenia patients, bipolar patients and controls. As well as standard SF categories (animals and food), fluency to two affective categories, happy and fear was measured, i.e. participants were asked to produce as many words as they could that resulted in or are associated with fear or happiness. Schizophrenia patients showed SF and PF deficits. Bipolar patients showed PF deficits. Thus, PF is argued to be a good cognitive marker in both disorders. Severity of delusions was related to SF performance in all patients. The patient groups showed different patterns on the affective categories compared to controls: the bipolar patients were better and produced more words, especially to the happiness category, and the schizophrenia patients were impaired and produced less words. The results suggest an interesting interaction between psychotic illnesses, fluency and emotion. PMID:16376054

The attrition of females studying physics after high school is a concern to the science education community. Most undergraduate science programs require introductory physics coursework. Thus, success in introductory physics is necessary for students to progress to higher levels of science study. Success also influences attitudes; if females are well-prepared, feel confident, and do well in introductory physics, they may be inclined to study physics further. This quantitative study using multilevel modeling focused on determining factors from high school physics preparation (content, pedagogy, and assessment) and the affective domain that influenced female and male performance in introductory university physics. The study controlled for some university/course level characteristics as well as student demographic and academic background characteristics. The data consisted of 1973 surveys from 54 introductory physics courses within 35 universities across the US. The results highlight high school physics and affective experiences that differentially influenced female and male performance. These experiences include: learning requirements, computer graphing/analysis, long written problems, everyday world examples, community projects, cumulative tests/quizzes, father's encouragement, family's belief that science leads to a better career, and the length of time students believed that high school physics would help in university physics. There were also experiences that had a similar influence on female and male performance. Positively related to performance were: covering fewer topics for longer periods of time, the history of physics as a recurring topic, physics-related videos, and test/quiz questions that involved calculations and/or were drawn from standardized tests. Negatively related to performance were: student-designed projects, reading/discussing labs the day before performing them, microcomputer based laboratories, discussion after demonstrations, and family

The performance of a solar desiccant cooling system depends on the performance of its components, particularly the desiccant dehumidifier and solar collectors. The desiccant dehumidifier performance is affected by the properties of the desiccant, particularly the shape of the isotherm and the regeneration temperature. The performance of a solar collector, as one would expect, depends on its operating temperature, which is very close to the desiccant regeneration temperature. The purpose of this study was to identify the desiccant isotherm shape (characterized by separation factor) that would result in the optimum performance - based on thermal coefficient of performance and cooling capacity - of a desiccant cooling cycle operating in ventilation mode. Different regeneration temperatures ranging from 65 to 160 C were investigated to identify the corresponding optimum isotherm shape at each. Thermal COP dictates the required area of the solar collectors, and the cooling capacity is an indication of the size and cost of the cooling equipment. Staged and no-staged regeneration methods were studied.

Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. The past 25 years of research has established the complexity of the construct, and places the individual stress experience within a larger organizational context of people's relation to their work. Recently, the work on burnout has expanded internationally and has led to new conceptual models. The focus on engagement, the positive antithesis of burnout, promises to yield new perspectives on interventions to alleviate burnout. The social focus of burnout, the solid research basis concerning the syndrome, and its specific ties to the work domain make a distinct and valuable contribution to people's health and well-being. PMID:11148311

Intended for teachers, counselors, job placement specialists, employers, and disabled persons, this publication provides information about jobsperformed in business and industry by persons with disabilities. Each of the 71 job descriptions presented specifies the type of job, disability of the person performing the job, company information, job…

Circadian clocks of adolescents typically run late-including sleep times-yet adolescents generally are expected at school early in the morning. Due to this mismatch between internal (circadian) and external (social) times, adolescents suffer from chronic sleep deficiency, which, in turn, affects academic performance negatively. This constellation affects students' future career prospects. Our study correlates chronotype and examination performance. In total, 4734 grades were collected from 741 Dutch high school students (ages 11-18 years) who had completed the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire to estimate their internal time. Overall, the lowest grades were obtained by students who were very late chronotypes (MSFsc > 5.31 h) or slept very short on schooldays (SDw < 7.03 h). The effect of chronotype on examination performance depended on the time of day that examinations were taken. Opposed to late types, early chronotypes obtained significantly higher grades during the early (0815-0945 h) and late (1000-1215 h) morning. This group difference in grades disappeared in the early afternoon (1245-1500 h). Late types also obtained lower grades than early types when tested at the same internal time (hours after MSFsc), which may reflect general attention and learning disadvantages of late chronotypes during the early morning. Our results support delaying high school starting times as well as scheduling examinations in the early afternoon to avoid discrimination of late chronotypes and to give all high school students equal academic opportunities. PMID:25537752

In an experiment repeated for two separate years, incubation temperature was found to affect the body size and swimming performance of hatchling green turtles ( Chelonia mydas). In the first year, hatchlings from eggs incubated at 26°C were larger in size than hatchlings from 28 and 30°C, whilst in the second year hatchlings from 25.5°C were similar in size to hatchings from 30°C. Clutch of origin influenced the size of hatchlings at all incubation temperatures even when differences in egg size were taken into account. In laboratory measurements of swimming performance, in seawater at 28°C, hatchlings from eggs incubated at 25.5 and 26°C had a lower stroke rate frequency and lower force output than hatchlings from 28 and 30°C. These differences appeared to be caused by the muscles of hatchlings from cooler temperatures fatiguing at a faster rate. Clutch of origin did not influence swimming performance. This finding that hatchling males incubated at lower temperature had reduced swimming ability may affect their survival whilst running the gauntlet of predators in shallow near-shore waters, prior to reaching the relative safety of the open sea.

The effectiveness of carbohydrase enzymes has been inconsistent in corn-based swine diets; however, the increased substrate of nonstarch polysaccharides in drought-affected corn may provide an economic model for enzyme inclusion, but this has not been evaluated. A total of 360 barrows (PIC 1050 × 337, initially 5.85 kg BW) were used to determine the effects of drought-affected corn inclusion with or without supplementation of commercial carbohydrases on growth performance and nutrient digestibility of nursery pigs. Initially, 34 corn samples were collected to find representatives of normal and drought-affected corn. The lot selected to represent the normal corn had a test weight of 719.4 kg/m3, 15.0% moisture, and 4.2% xylan. The lot selected to represent drought-affected corn had a test weight of 698.8 kg/m3, 14.3% moisture, and 4.7% xylan. After a 10-d acclimation period postweaning, nursery pigs were randomly allotted to 1 of 8 dietary treatments in a completely randomized design. Treatments were arranged in a 2 × 4 factorial with main effects of corn (normal vs. drought affected) and enzyme inclusion (none vs. 100 mg/kg Enzyme A vs. 250 mg/kg Enzyme B vs. 100 mg/kg Enzyme A + 250 mg/kg Enzyme B). Both enzymes were included blends of β-glucanase, cellulose, and xylanase (Enzyme A) or hemicellulase and pectinases (Enzyme B). Pigs were fed treatment diets from d 10 to 35 postweaning in 2 phases. Feed and fecal samples were collected on d 30 postweaning to determine apparent total tract digestibility of nutrients. The nutrient concentrations of normal and drought-affected corn were similar, which resulted in few treatment or main effects differences of corn type or enzyme inclusion. No interactions were observed (P > 0.10) between corn source and enzyme inclusion. Overall (d 10 to 35), treatments had no effect on ADG or ADFI, but enzyme A inclusion tended to improve (P < 0.10; 0.74 vs. 0.69) G:F, which was primarily driven by the improved feed efficiency (0

Purpose: The paper aims to follow social exchange theory and group social capital theory, to predict positive relationships between (informal) mentoring and various support resources for two types of performance (i.e. perceptions of individual and team performance). Design/methodology/approach: The associations of individual-level mentoring and…

While policymakers have tried to improve teacher workforce effectiveness by raising certification requirements, research shows that credentials correlate little with teaching excellence, as measured by student performance. School districts do little additional screening and commonly award tenure after two or three years regardless of performance.…

Reforming teacher tenure is an idea that appears to be gaining traction with the underlying assumption being that one can infer to a reasonable degree how well a teacher will perform over her career based on estimates of her early-career effectiveness. Here we explore the potential for using value-added models to estimate performance and inform…